


old exo fic dump

by mediest



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-10-10 08:24:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 56,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17422349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mediest/pseuds/mediest
Summary: all written between 2012-2014.1. layhan, pacific rim AU2. krishan, roadtripping across china, explicit3. chantao/baekyeol, zombie apocalypse AU, explicit4. krisyeol, high school AU, explicit5. layhan, rock band AU6. baektao, friends with benefits, explicit7. krisyeol, 1234 i declare a prank war8. layhan, a year-long break9. baeksoo, the pros and cons of laryngitis10. baeksoo, guardians of the galaxy AU, explicit





	1. CHIMERA NINE (lay/lu han)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dead WIP: zhang yixing falls out of the sky, into a jaeger. (pacific rim au)

 

 _i. and in the sea that's painted black_  
  
  
Yixing wasn’t at San Francisco, but he was there in Manila six months later. When the second Kaiju the world ever saw rose out of Taal Lake under cover of darkness and tropical rain, it reached the metropolitan area at sunrise. By the time the Chinese government was volunteering the aid of PLAAF pilots, an estimated ten thousand people had died in the attack.  
  
Yixing was stationed in Guangzhou. The last time he got a good look at that tarmac, he was halfway up his boarding ladder as Zitao jogged over. Without his helmet on, Zitao was the most recognizable guy in the division. His hair was a centimeter longer than regulation allowed, dyed a deep red that tested the grooming standards for ‘natural, human colors’. Yifan let it slide. Good pilots were good pilots.  
  
“Ready to go slay a dragon?” he shouted up to Yixing.  
  
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Yixing said. His gloves stretched tight across his knuckles. “Footage looks like the same thing that hit California last fall.”  
  
“Think they’re gonna nuke this one too?”  
  
The Americans had answered devastation with devastation. After six relentless, desperate days, they dropped three nuclear missiles on their golden coast and turned it into an irradiated ground zero. Yixing had no personal concept of San Francisco, but neither did any of the post-attack photographs. The city didn’t look like itself anymore. It could’ve been anywhere.  
  
Manila wasn’t just anywhere. It was on Yixing’s side of the planet, a thousand kilometers off China’s southern coast. “Let’s shoot some stuff at it and see if that works first,” he said.  
  
Zitao grinned and lifted his flight helmet. Yixing responded in kind, reaching down and banging their white kevlar crowns together.   
  
“I’ll see you up there,” Zitao called out as Yixing finished climbing into his Flanker’s cockpit.  
  
Yixing nodded. “Watch your six,” he said, and couldn’t be sure if Zitao heard him from the ground, but it was the same thing they always said. Around here it meant, check your six o’clock position for enemy aircrafts. Remember to watch your back, but I’m watching it for you too. Fly safe.  
  
  
-  
  
  
The Kaiju was visible from across the bay. Later it’d be codenamed Hundun for  _primordial chaos_ , the creation myths of separation between Heaven and Earth. _Are you seeing this?_  Zitao’s voice crackled as Yixing’s grip hardened on his control stick. Hundun stood surrounded by fire and gray rubble and crushed military tanks. Dinosaur-like, it’d leveled downtown Manila into a crater. Yixing quickly came into range. “Fox Two,” he said, swooping around Hundun’s chest for a clear missile shot. The Archer struck Hundun under its massive jaw. Its rumble vibrated the air, wild and unearthly. Blue blood sprayed from its mouth. Yixing spotted Zitao’s fighter as it zoomed in fast above him with gunfire, that dark sleek J-11, doubling back around in a break-turn to take another go.  
  
_Keep your distance._  Yifan, back at command base.  
  
_Autocannons aren’t working,_  Zitao complained.  _It feels like I’m giving it a massage._  
  
“Try your Archers,” Yixing said. “I don’t think it likes those.”  
  
Hundun was thick-skinned, with green scales like armor. Archers worked but not enough. Another one of Yixing’s made contact before Hundun batted at him with pitying anger, like he was a small dog trying to bite back.   
  
“Shit—!” Yixing pulled up hard and brutal, narrowly missing a collision with the Kaiju’s clawed arm. His heart was pounding. He kept the steep angle, accelerating as he climbed.   
  
_Yixing?_  
  
“I’m here,” Yixing said as he rolled into a vertical spiral. When he gained enough altitude, he cut his afterburners, and dropped into a dive, aiming another missile for Hundun’s head.  
  
He knew, a stone truth inside his chest, that they weren’t going to stop it. At best they could slow it down. Put themselves on the line to buy some time for civilians to finish evacuating. Philippine forces on the ground and in the air had piled up casualties by the hundreds. A few lone PLAAF divisions only added to the body count. Over the radio they heard Liu Chao shout, and then he was being whipped down by the Kaiju’s brick wall of a tail. What was left of his fighter fell in a long comet tail of fire and destroyed metal.   
  
_Fuck,_  Zitao spat out, shaky and upset and completely furious.  _What do you have left?_  
  
“Four PLs,” Yixing scanned his heads-up display. “Half of my 30mm rounds.” He’d emptied the other half futilely into the Kaiju’s neck and lower belly in hopes of hitting something soft. “Do you know if this thing has a ballsack I can shoot at?”  
  
Zitao made an abrupt turn, disengaging to reposition himself.  _How about straight down its throat?_    
  
Yifan again, low and tense:  _What are you doing, lieutenant?_  
  
_I’m gonna make it swallow a load. Sir._  
  
Yixing choked on a laugh. His blood ran cold at the same time. “Zitao—”  
  
_You got any better ideas?_  
  
He was coming back at Hundun straight-on, fast, parallel with the horizon and level with the Kaiju’s head. Yifan swore right in everyone’s ears.  
  
“You’re too close,” Yixing warned, looping around to provide Zitao some cover. “Don’t—”  
  
_I got it padlocked—_  
  
Zitao’s aim was perfect. His rocket sped past the mountain range of Hundun’s bared teeth and into the back of its throat. The Kaiju reared backwards, roaring. Finally some real damage. It staggered on its feet. Black fumes leaked from its mouth like a column of chimney smoke.  
  
What happened after that, the feature presentation of Yixing’s next half year of nightmares: Zitao, pulling out in a jink maneuver as soon as the rocket launched. Hundun’s giant body, coming for him. This wasn't a dogfight, it didn't matter that Zitao could out-fly anyone. Hundun was big. Yixing fired on it again, all four remaining PLs one after the other. He yelled at Zitao, he couldn’t remember what, just get out of there, get the hell out, and Zitao yelled too,  _Stay back_  before Hundun crashed Zitao’s J-11 out of the sky. Communications dropped out. Yixing got caught at the edge of the resulting explosion. A firework of debris shot out violently towards him. The trauma bulleted through Yixing's chest. His back-up hydraulics were failing, his turtleback blazing in the mirrors, his name being shouted on repeat under the blare of fire warnings. He gulped for air inside the oxygen mask, trying to get a handle on himself, strangling his terror. His fighter had rolled upside-down, headed in a turbulent spin towards the bay. The cockpit was hot, burning all around him. He used the rudder for control, he needed to stay in the air just a little longer, and the plane righted itself for ten seconds until his entire tail blew off and he saw the glittering water and heard Yifan’s voice through blasts of radio static,  _YIXING—BAIL, NOW—_  
  
Yixing punched out. The canopy tore from his cockpit. Wind pounded into him like a bullet train. His entire helmet ripped off and he could feel his spine fracture under the force of the ejection. The pain sang through his bones as he fell.   
  
Parachute, his brain was screaming, where’s your parachute, Zhang Yixing, fucking pull your D-ring, fucking  _live_ —  
  
He hit the lake without blacking out. Right leg broke upon impact. Left leg had already suffered a dislocated knee. He detached his parachute before it could pull him under. Water filled his eyes and lungs, his body was cocooned in a hundred tons of flightgear, both legs were dead weight. Something was wrong with his left shoulder but he pushed through it, grabbing at his deployed life raft, dragging himself through the cold water.  
  
Once he made it onto the raft, coughing, shivering, fighting off the shock, he searched for the Kaiju. He could see it from out here, cruel and dark, its thick head crest the tallest point in what was left of Manila’s skyline.   
  
Yixing’s vision blurred. If he slept, he wouldn’t wake up, so he forced his eyes open and watched.  
  
  
-  
  
  
A nuclear missile finally brought down Hundun hours later. Yixing missed Zitao’s funeral ceremony, too busy getting two titanium rods inserted in his left knee. He heard about it later from Yifan, who was sleeping less than three hours a day. He’d lost most of his division. Inside that kind of bigger picture, Yixing was one of the lucky ones.  
  
A psychiatric evaluator, Dr. Song, visited after Yixing’s third and final surgery. She went down the stress response checklist with him. Was he eating and sleeping well? Did he ever find himself in a daze, dissociated from his surroundings? How was his concentration?  
  
“Sometimes my heart races for no reason,” Yixing admitted. “I start shaking.”  
  
“Are you having flashbacks?” she asked, pushing her long brown hair behind her ear. She couldn’t be much older than Yixing, way more fresh-faced than any of the other doctors he’d met. He liked that; he’d always liked bright people.  
  
“Just a couple bad dreams.”  
  
Dr. Song kept her notes laid down against her knees, instead of raised between them. It helped Yixing relax a little. “How about you walk me through them?”  
  
They were hard to explain. He dreamed about Zitao a lot. Not just in Manila, but back in flight school running the simulators, or silhouetted on the airbase tarmac with his hair blowing. Instead of crying or screaming, Yixing woke up adrift, wading through the shallow memories. He guessed his mind couldn’t figure out how to grieve for someone like Zitao. It couldn't grasp the full loss so it clung to things of smaller magnitude: the sound of a trigger-click, the red inside a sunset. Certain kinds of people died young and part of you had to have known it was coming, as if it was written into their DNA, the way they acted on the world.   
  
And then there was Yixing, the kind of person who got called a survivor. Who began wheeling himself down to physical therapy as soon as the doctors gave the all-clear. It was the only way he could stand being in the hospital day after day. The windows in his room faced north, which didn’t hold any particular significance, except that it offered him a good view. Every other morning he mistook clouds for smoking planes. Then followed the terrible urge to crumple. To fold up into himself and compact his body until it was rock, deep and impenetrable inside the earth.  
  
So the next question had to be: “Do you want to fly again?”  
  
“Yes,” Yixing said in a heartbeat.  
  
That surprised Dr. Song. “You don’t need to make that decision right away. Of course your recovery is more important.”  
  
Yixing cracked a smile. “Flying’s a part of who I am,” he told her, whether it was the best part, or if it grew into something malignant, twisted into a mass of burnt scrap metal. Either way, he wasn’t ready to turn away from himself. To be the kind of person who couldn’t come back.  
  
  
-  
  
  
Six months of intensive PT, rehab, and counseling, during which a third Kaiju attacked Cabo, then a fourth in Sydney only three months after. The world, whole universe, was bearing down like glass over an anthill. By September, Yixing had 85% of his legs back, and 90% was in reach, though his spine would never be the same. By October, the medical evaluation board had recommended him for temporary separation from military service. Yixing’s physical fitness was compromised. He was removed from the active duty roster with honors.  
  
A month later in Hong Kong, the Jaeger Program received full funding to begin recruiting test pilots.  
  
  
-  
  
  
Yifan had a personal connection working on the project, an old friend, some young genius type who’d been conducting brain-computer interface research in Beijing. So Yixing cashed in their five-plus years together for a favor.  
  
“Absolutely not,” said Yifan. “I don’t even want you flying planes, what makes you think I want you flying giant mechas?”  
  
Yixing held his phone wedged between his cheek and shoulder as he rolled out dough to make dumplings. He was visiting his parents. His mother, with worried exasperation, had let him annex the household chores from under her control and then seat her in front of the TV. “You’re not responsible for me,” he told Yifan. “You’re not my commanding officer anymore.”  
  
“I know that,” Yifan acknowledged stiffly.  
  
“So try to act like, I don’t know, like my friend instead?”  
  
“I was under the impression that friends don’t let friends throw themselves back into combat barely half a year after a near-death experience.”  
  
Hands covered in flour, Yixing had to brush the hair from his eyes with his forearm. It was growing long, now that there was no reason to regularly keep cutting it. “A friend would know that getting back out there is exactly what I need.”  
  
Yifan sighed. “What you need is to heal, Yixing.”  
  
“Then let me do it on my own terms,” Yixing said.   
  
Yifan’s next pause was a long one. Yixing wiped his hands on his apron and adjusted the phone, pressing it closer to his ear. Through the other ear came the low volume of his mother’s guilty pleasure wuxia drama playing in the next room. He hadn’t lived in this house for years, but it was the most dependable fixed point he knew. And now when he slept sometimes he saw it surrounded by a lake of blue blood, the faces of people he loved floating along the dark, viscous surface. His subconscious understood best: not nightmares, but omens. You suffered nightmares. Omens, you fought.  
  
“I’ll make some calls,” Yifan finally said. “But I’m not promising you anything.”  
  
“I owe you one,” Yixing replied. He poked a smiley face into the dough.  
  
“No,” Yifan said, softened. “You don’t.”  
  
He came through for Yixing in the end. It was, he said, a bad habit of his. By the end of the month, he had a helicopter ride set up back in Guangzhou and a few parting words: “Be good” and “Don’t die.” Yixing, who could manage a perfect 90 degree bow and a “thank you” to practically anyone on the planet except Yifan, said, “Don’t be so dramatic.”   
  
“I’m just grateful you’re becoming someone else’s insubordinate problem,” Yifan said. His arm spasmed with bottled movement and his face was wondering whether a hug would be inappropriate. Eventually he squeezed Yixing’s shoulder, expression opaque.  
  
“Be good, Zhang Yixing,” he repeated, as if making up for not saying it enough before.  
  
“I will,” Yixing agreed. Standing in the sunlight with the helicopter rotor thrusting wind against their bodies, urging him to be aerodynamic, for a moment he felt like it was possible, to be good, to eventually be okay.  
  
  
-  
  
  
Despite its chosen Hong Kong location, the Jaeger Program was a South Korean-led initiative. The Seoul Conference that shadowed the Sydney attack had yielded three major steps forward: 1) the founding of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps, 2) global dialogue about proactive, aggressive solutions against the Kaiju threat, and 3) Kim Minseok, SNU alum with degrees in electrical engineering and physics, technical analyst at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses and youngest KIDA program leader in a decade, though not as young as he looked. At the time Kim Minseok had just pulled a week of all-nighters to finish his schematics, his hair looked more wild boyband than respectable scientist, and there was a coffee stain on his tie, but he couldn’t care less. He presented his work to a room of international representatives, specialists, and sponsors, and two weeks later was setting up base in an abandoned factory in Hong Kong. The name Jaeger came later. His project codename had begun as Mark-1; colloquially, Giant Ass Robots.   
  
In one of the only interviews Kim Minseok ever gave, ten years later when they were losing the war again and Jaegers were being decommissioned in favor of the Anti-Kaiju Wall, he was asked if he continued to believe in what he’d built. “Listen,” he said, “that’s not what the program is about. I didn’t build a giant ass robot because I believed in giant ass robots. I believed in us, people, collectively. That we could pull together, rise up, and show monsters what we’re capable of. We’re better than that fucking wall—sorry—and we’re not done yet.”  
  
The guy waiting for Yixing when he landed wasn’t Kim Minseok. He sported a shade of bleached hair that Yixing hadn’t seen on anyone out of college. From a distance he looked skinny, almost birdlike, but as he approached the helipad Yixing saw that there was more height and mass to him than first appeared, probably some muscle under the wrinkled button-down and PPDC jacket.  
  
“Hey,” he greeted, “Wu Yifan’s Zhang Yixing?”  
  
Yixing took in the unaffected friendliness, bright brown eyes. “That’s me,” he said, adjusting the strap of his duffel bag on his shoulder. It weighed all of fifteen pounds; he’d long gotten accustomed to traveling light.  
  
He followed Bright Eyes through the giant entrance of the Shatterdome, which was still under construction, pouring with Jaeger techs and military personnel, at least three languages being spoken at any given time. Korean, English, both Cantonese and Mandarin. Two different tractors almost ran Yixing over. The ceiling was a mile tall and he could smell all the equipment in the air, sparking, heavy and metallic, like stepping into a living machine, his whole body integrated into the size of its greater purpose.   
  
“Sorry you had to fly out alone,” Bright Eyes apologized as he led Yixing down an interior hallway, showing him to his room: nine square meters with a hard cot, a bathroom. It felt like boot camp all over again, which instantly made it home. “I wanted to meet you in Guangzhou but something came up. I’m Lu Han, by the way.”  
  
“Ah—” Yixing glanced back over his shoulder, towards the door. “You’re Lu Han?”  
  
Lu Han looked playfully mistrustful. “Why, what’d Yifan say?”  
  
The exact phrase had been  _Lu Han’s ineffable_. (“Not eff-able?” Yixing repeated. Yifan sounded alarmed: “No, ineffable, he’s eff-able enough—forget it.”)  
  
“Nothing negative,” Yixing said placidly.  
  
“Be honest,” Lu Han pressed. “Did you picture me older? More geeky? Not so good-looking?“  
  
All of the above, but Yixing merely answered, “You’re blonder than I thought.” He found himself grinning, though he couldn’t pinpoint why.   
  
Luckily Lu Han was grinning too. He scrubbed his gloved hand through his hair sheepishly. “The night before your thirtieth birthday, it’s either this or a tattoo.”  
  
“It doesn’t look bad,” Yixing said. “Actually, you remind me of someone.”  
  
Not head-on, but from the periphery, there were some similarities: that kind of zoomed-in, searchlight eye contact when they talked to you, the proclivity towards hair dye. Lu Han, like Zitao, had a quickness, an immediacy. It was easy to believe that this was just a reunion; you’d known him before.   
  
“Well,” Lu Han was saying to Yixing, “you’re more or less how I thought you’d be.”  
  
  
-  
  
  
Lu Han co-led the Jaeger Program. In the most basic terms, Minseok designed the machine and Lu Han found a way to drive it.  
  
“It’s called the Pons System,” he said. “It’s a neural link that bridges the pilot with the mecha armature. So far we’ve used it to hook pilots into individual limbs, like the arms or legs, and the results look good.”   
  
The Jaeger’s outer shell was incomplete, leaving her dense wiring and cables exposed like metal bone and tissue. She towered at over seventy meters, thirty times bigger than anything Yixing’d ever flown. As big as Hundun had been, gray and thick and tough. Yixing stood under her on the platform lift, gazing up at her pulsating blue nuclear core, and fell in love.  
  
“So all you have to do is think at her?”  
  
“You won’t really be thinking  _at_  her,” Lu Han explained. “The interface has to work on a more instinctive, preconscious level. Ideally, she’ll feel like an actual part of you. Like an efficient third arm.”  
  
Yixing turned around and caught the last few seconds of Lu Han watching him as he watched the Jaeger. “She’s amazing,” Yixing told him. “What you’re doing here is amazing.”  
  
“It’s not just me,” Lu Han said, like he was one of those guys who didn’t know how to take a bare-faced compliment.  
  
“I really mean it,” Yixing said. “And I know that, in my condition, I wasn’t on your short list of candidates. Thanks for taking me onboard anyway.”  
  
“Yifan told me about Manila,” Lu Han said. “Anyone insane enough to go through all of that and then come back for more has to make for a good pilot.”  
  
Good pilot, Yifan used to say about Yixing. Good soldier. Lu Han sounded like he was saying something different. He’d spent months creating this thing, making it perfect, and Yixing was going to stand inside and act as the beating heart. The most necessary, vulnerable part.   
  
The back of Yixing’s neck went hot. He scratched it with his thumbnail. “What’s her name?”  
  
Chimera Nine: a creature made from distinct animals, a synthesis of different parts into a whole. The nine was for luck. To the Chinese, it was a symbol of the dragon, power, completeness. Yixing leaned forward against the railing and drank in the scale of the dome. On the platform forty meters higher, a team of engineers were coordinating the attachment of the Jaeger’s left hand. Lu Han leaned forward, too. He was close but not yet touching.  
  
“I’ll get you processed tomorrow,” he said. “Take a look inside your head and see how you respond to the neural connection.”  
  
“Wow,” said Yixing. “We only just met.”  
  
Lu Han glanced over hurriedly before he recognized it as a joke. “Round of drinks on me?”  
  
Yixing’s shoulders hunched up as he smiled. Above them, Chimera Nine’s machinery fastened together joint by joint, metal grinding and snapping into place. Yixing flexed his own hand, imagining it encased inside a larger one, as if being held. Earlier on the helipad, Lu Han’s hand gripping his as he’d said, “Welcome to Hong Kong.”  
  
  
  
  
  
_ii. creatures lurk below the deck_  
  
  
Lu Han became friends with Minseok during his semester abroad in the States. It should’ve been a long shot, but Lu Han had a flatmate who had a girlfriend who knew a guy who was throwing a party. By that Friday night Lu Han was playing beer pong on a giant circuit board disguised as a table. 500 flashing LEDS, automatic ball washers, and a mechanical arm that was destroying Lu Han’s life. “Are you getting schooled by my robot?” Minseok crowed. “Is my dickless robot totally emasculating you?” while Lu Han laughed so hard he felt like he was about to puke.   
  
“I love that stuff,” Minseok confided later as the party was winding down. The two of them were loitering outside for a smoke, in the dead of winter, the alcohol in their systems masking the threat of frostbite.  
  
“You love drinking?” Lu Han said. His breath formed little white clouds against the polluted expanse of sky. Big cities were the only place someone like him could survive, among the infinite flux of other people.  
  
“No, you know,” Minseok said. “Making stuff happen. Building stuff.”  
  
“Stuff. That’s deep shit,” Lu Han teased around his cigarette. Minseok shoved him over, then pulled him back in to sling an arm around Lu Han’s shoulders.   
  
“I’m gonna build you something,” Minseok decided. “My new Chinese buddy. Tell me what you want.”  
  
“I dunno, man. Global security,” Lu Han said, with great pageantry, while Minseok stage-whispered,  _Wow, Miss Universe_. “World peace.”  
  
Ten years later Minseok called him up and asked, “Do you remember when we met?”  
  
“Kim Minseok?” Lu Han said, faking astonishment. “It’s an honor. I’m not worthy.”  
  
“Oh, stop,” Minseok simpered.  
  
“I spotted you on the news yesterday,” Lu Han added as he cleaned around the apartment with Minseok on speaker. “You seem busy.”  
  
“Yeah, I’m flying out to Hong Kong tomorrow for the long haul.” Just like that, no big deal. He’d given Lu Han the news about his KIDA promotion in a similar way. There was an implicit understanding that despite the accomplishment, ahead of him was an uphill climb. “What are you up to these days?”   
  
Lu Han saw where this was headed. “Hey, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”  
  
“I didn’t even ask yet.”  
  
“If you want, I can put you in contact with some colleagues—”  
  
“Hear me out, okay?” Minseok interrupted. “I have the construct but not the mechanism. You do. This is everything you were working on back at BIT.”  
  
“No,” Lu Han said, as impossible as it was for him to say it to Minseok. “Sorry, but I’m not your guy anymore. It’s been a long year.”  
  
“I know, I watched you go through it, and I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t really need you,” Minseok said. The guilt curled sourly in Lu Han’s gut. “I promise this won’t be like that. C’mon. Come out to Hong Kong and stop wasting yourself.”   
  
Except the act of not pulling a trigger wasn’t the same as wasting the bullet. Lu Han pulled back the curtains and cracked open the living room window, leaning his upper body outside. This apartment was another one of his enduring mistakes. The view was great on the off chance he managed to look. High up on the 25th floor, the elevator ride alone used to be enough to make him queasy. Fuck. People were dying. Inaction killed them just as easily as anything he could make with his own hands. Lu Han sucked in a breath and opened his eyes.  
  
  
-  
  
  
Only a couple people were privy to the fact that Lu Han’d been an army brat. His father retired when he was sixteen, but by then everything had taken root: the nomadic lifestyle, the yes sir, no ma’am smile, the intimate knowledge of duty, honor, and country. If Lu Han ever acted out, it was never in a big way. Lifting a couple candy bars from the commissary. Smoking, staying out past curfew on the weekends. Never looking at girls. But overall he was one of the good kids. When he found himself gravitating back towards military R&D after graduation, the Beijing Institute of Tech scooped him up without any foreplay, already knowing where he’d come from and what he could do. Lu Han, raised by metal. Lu Han, trained by soldiers, a stone shadow of a parent, and now he’d come back home to find out if he could put a person back inside the weapon.   
  
Zhang Yixing wouldn’t enter the picture until much later. 179cm, 60kg, brown hair, brown eyes, according to the personnel files. 29 years old, decorated fighter pilot, and ranked among the top 5% of his graduating academy class.   
  
“Okay,” Lu Han said, rubbing his forehead, “but driving a Jaeger would be physically demanding and I can’t just pretend he’s at full health.”  
  
“He’s fought a Kaiju before,” Yifan told him. “That means it’s personal and  _that_  means he’s going to give you everything he has.”  
  
“He sounds,”  _great_ , “crazy.”  
  
“So it’s a good match,” Yifan said. “Listen to me this one time, alright? You need him.”  
  
  
-  
  
  
Built around an old factory, the bulk of the Shatterdome was dedicated to Jaeger construction and testing. Remaining areas had been leveraged into two hallways of personnel quarters, a mess hall, a training gym, and a rec room. ‘Room’ was generous; it was four cement walls housing a pool table, a ping pong table, and a war-torn coffeemaker. No windows. They’d talked about installing a carpet, but a memo like that easily fell off the radar amidst everyone trying to fight off the next extinction event. The highlight was the two lumpy sofas that smelled of stale fabric cleaner, a burgundy color that might’ve been bold three years ago. Lu Han liked the one against the back wall, closer to the finicky heater. He’d gotten in the habit of taking catnaps, half an hour at a time, in the late evenings when his body was going to shut down on him if he didn’t take a break. By now it was common knowledge, too. “Everyone out,” Oh Sehun announced, grabbing Kim Jongin by the elbow as they ended their pool match early. “The boss needs his beauty rest.”  
  
Lu Han fell backwards onto the cushions, one leg slung off the edge to trip Sehun as he walked past.   
  
He threw an arm across his face and closed his eyes. They opened again sometime later to the click of the double doors opening, and a quick, hushed, “Oh, sorry—”  
  
“No, it’s okay,” Lu Han said. He sat up, the inside of his head a cloud of dense cotton, and checked his watch. 2:30 in the morning. He felt like sewer sludge. He really needed a shower. “You need something?”  
  
Yixing pulled the doors shut behind himself, this time exaggeratedly careful. “I just thought one of the guys forgot to turn off the lights in here.”   
  
“Well, thanks for the wake-up call.”  
  
“No problem,” Yixing said. “I was sort of already in the neighborhood.”  
  
Lu Han finally noticed the gym towel slung around the back of Yixing’s neck, the boxing tape he was unwrapping methodically from around his knuckles, the way his damp bangs were clumped against his forehead. He must have been at it for a while, unloading into a heavy punching bag, alone. The image agitated Lu Han, struck at a soft open belly of sympathy.  
  
“If you’re having trouble sleeping, you should let one of us know. Zhou Mi could hook you up with some pills.”  
  
“It’s on and off,” Yixing said with an almost embarrassed shrug. “At least with the gym, I can do something useful with the time. How can you sleep in here? It’s freezing.”  
  
“Is it?” Lu Han yawned, too lazy to hide it. “I don’t even know what day it is right now.”  
  
“It’s Thursday,” Yixing said beatifically. Lu Han laughed. His voice came out scratchy. Maybe it really was too cold. Yixing’s chest was visible through his wifebeater, along with the hypnotic movement of his shoulder muscles as he reached for Jongin’s old cue stick.  
  
Lu Han weighed doing the rest of his labwork against kicking Yixing’s ass at pool. It wasn’t as if Yixing couldn’t use the break himself. The Shatterdome sharpened obsession and nurtured it, gave it a target. It was no wonder that people like Yixing, people who came through the door with a deep history, made for the richest soil. He’d taken to all the tests and training easily. When Lu Han’d linked him up to Chimera Nine’s left arm for the first time, Yixing’d made a noise liked a stunned, hurt animal—Lu Han still couldn’t figure out how to dampen that initial pain—and then released a slow breath, as if he’d signed himself up for this part as well. Lu Han woke up in a cold sweat sometimes. The Shatterdome knew what was inside him too.   
  
But Yixing right now was pursing his lips in thought as he surveyed the pool table, the most important thing that currently existed. So for a moment Lu Han let it all go. He got to his feet.  
  
They finished Jongin and Sehun’s abandoned game and started another. Yixing was winning until they both got stuck on the 8-ball. Spent five rounds going back and forth, before Yixing spoke up, “I have to confess something,” just as Lu Han took aim. Lu Han’s stick glanced off the cue ball, which rolled forward two miserable inches nowhere.  
  
“You timed that.”  
  
“No I didn’t,” Yixing defended as he circled the table. “If you’re that easily distracted—”  
  
Lu Han blew a puff of air down Yixing’s neck. To his delight, Yixing jerked instinctively, botched his turn and retaliated with a soft punch to Lu Han’s shoulder.  
  
“Oof,” Lu Han said. “What were you saying about being distracted?”  
  
“Get lost,” Yixing said.  
  
“Get lost,” Lu Han parroted, grinning when Yixing did. “What were you about to confess?”  
  
“What?” Yixing took a second to remember as Lu Han bent back over the pool table. His own dimpled grin became self-conscious. “Just that I did know you were sleeping in here.”  
  
Lu Han looked up, missing the ball again.  
  
Yixing pushed his hand through his hair. “I thought someone should check up on you and make sure you were okay. I don’t know why I lied,” he added. “Sorry.”  
  
“Thanks,” Lu Han said, after he realized he should say something too, instead of just standing there with a bird in his chest, suspended.  
  
He was the one who eventually sank the 8-ball, while Yixing applauded and said, without any irony, “You’ve worked hard.” It was morning by the time Lu Han dragged himself back to his actual room. Yellow sunbeams striped the bed like a ribcage. Lu Han lay inside them and knocked out within five minutes.  
  
  
-  
  
  
Yixing’d been around for ten days and counting. In that time he’d made fast friends with anyone in the Shatterdome who knew an ounce of Mandarin. That meant Fei Fei and Jia from K-Science, who gave him crash courses on Kaiju anatomy in the mess hall, acting out the dissection with their chopsticks while Yixing nodded along, eyebrows knitted in concentration. Zhou Mi, who was technically their lead medic on site, but so far mainly good for shoulder massages and prescription drugs. Also on the list was Sehun, who could say with passable pronunciation,  _Yes, Why, Shut up,_  and  _My friend wants to know if you think I’m sexy_. “What?” Yixing’d said, bewildered but kind of charmed, and Sehun’d responded, “Dr. Lu taught me,” thankfully in Korean, so all Yixing did was smile as Lu Han kicked Sehun out of the lab. It was far from the worst thing Sehun knew. Once Lu Han’d spent half an hour teaching Sehun sex slang, and for the next week he went around calling Jongin a chrysanthemum asshole. Inside of the cockpit, those two set the curve, but outside they seemed remarkably young, a generation of kids front-lining a war.  
  
“You have an incredibly unprofessional relationship with the pilots,” Kim Joonmyun, their PPDC liaison, had started commenting on a regular basis.  
  
“I don’t see any pilots,” Lu Han said loud enough so that Yixing could hear down the hall. Yixing slapped a palm to his own chest, as if physically wounded. Lu Han bit back a grin. He couldn’t stop it, his Achilles heel, his birthmark. He got too attached too fast.  
  
Yixing had a couple years on both Jongin and Sehun. It didn’t always show when he was asking bottomless questions about Jaegertech, fanning Sehun with both hands as they sprawled together across the gym floor, flitting around the Shatterdome like a bird. But Lu Han’d read the reports; he knew where Yixing’d been and he knew where to find the residue. Biomarkers of PTSD mapped out across Yixing’s MEG scans. Insomnia left fingerprints all over his serotonin levels. Neuroimaging had never felt as singular, as private as it did with Yixing.  
  
“I don’t mind,” Yixing said, lying shirtless in the test chair as Lu Han prepared the interface for his drivesuit. An array of electrodes was plugged across Yixing’s chest and skull, the skeleton of the suit’s eventual circuitry. To maximize synthesis, each suit had to be calibrated to the specific pilot’s nervous system. Which meant that by now Lu Han’d seen Yixing half-naked more than clothed.   
  
“Really? I think it’s invasive as hell,” Lu Han said. “Close your right fist for me.”  
  
Yixing closed his right fist. His neural output lit up Lu Han’s monitors. “How’d you get involved with the tech if you don’t even like it?”  
  
“It’s not that I don’t like it,” Lu Han said, trying to work through the words. “But it’s complicated. There’s a risk-benefit tradeoff. And if I don’t at least recognize the risk part of it, then I don’t deserve to be here, you know?”  
  
“You’re talking about having to keep yourself accountable,” Yixing said.  
  
“Yeah.” Lu Han felt weirdly relieved. “Exactly.”  
  
“I get it,” Yixing said. “Would it help if I said I trust you?”  
  
“Close your left fist now,” Lu Han said.  
  
The computers received another pattern of neural output. Broken down into electrical impulses, there wasn’t much variation between one healthy person’s brain and the next. So the fact that Yixing’s stood out was a reflection on Lu Han, too. In that moment his hippocampal activity was abnormally high. His pulse was reading 70 bpm, which was more than his established resting rate. Lu Han’s attention flew back towards the test chair, but Yixing looked fine. He met Lu Han’s eyes by accident. There was another spike in activity. Then, gradually, he steadied.   
  
  
-  
  
  
Two weeks later, Yixing sent Jongin flying into a virtual water tower so hard that Jongin’s vitals shot up and Lu Han winced.  
  
“Take it easy,” he said in Mandarin, monitoring Yixing’s brain on the right screen, Jongin’s on the left.  
  
“Sorry,” Yixing said, a little winded. “I’m still adjusting.”  
  
Jongin shook it off and regained his footing. “Again,” he said, that self-possessed competitive edge coming out to play. As poor as Yixing’s Korean was, he understood. Yixing raised his hands again inside his conn-pod, and slid his left foot back. His virtual Jaeger did the same.  
  
Jongdae finished whipping up the combat simulation a couple days ago. “I can do it,” he’d reassured when Lu Han originally asked, “ _but_  if you gave me more time I could do it better. I could factor in different terrains, equip her with a flamethrower, all the goods.” Unlike their other developers, who were military to the core, Jongdae’s origins were in the gaming industry. The Jaeger Sim came with all the essentials, but Lu Han’d bet money that somewhere hidden in the simulation was a kidnapped princess camped out on a Kaiju boss level.  
  
Either way, the sensory feedback and integrity were impressive. There wasn’t enough aggregated data on Kaiju yet to design an authentic virtual model (Do you think what I do is easy, Fei Fei’d said frostily, up to her elbows in frozen tissue samples), so Lu Han’d adapted the Pons for next best thing: hooking two pilots into the simulation simultaneously so they could beat on each other instead.   
  
“How’re they doing?” Minseok asked as Yixing re-engaged Jongin. Both of them fought how they flew, Jongin’s quick evasions and aerobatics against Yixing’s honed, direct responses. A river and a knife.  
  
“No red flags so far,” said Lu Han.  
  
Minseok nodded. “Let’s try switching it up.”  
  
Lu Han repeated in Mandarin over the intercom, “Baozi wants to see you on defense next.”  
  
Yixing laughed under his breath. “Does he know you call him that?”   
  
“I told him it means Most Respected Leader.”  
  
“He believed that? Hang on, have you been teaching me weird Korean this whole time too—” Yixing cut off as Jongin  _headbutted_  him. Minseok whistled through his teeth, impressed.  
  
It was Jongin’s third time in the Sim, Yixing’s first, and Yixing was giving as good as he got. But there was a millisecond lag in his reaction time, random brain impulses that acted as interference. The Pons required a clear mind. Yixing’s housed too many strays: snatches of free thought, emotion, memory. Jongin, on the other hand: you could put him inside a plane, a virtual mecha, and for a while he became part machine himself. Lu Han sucked on his bottom lip, watching. As Chimera Nine underwent her final stage of preparation, they had to start thinking about who they wanted to break her in.  
  
“I had a conference call with Joonmyun this morning,” Minseok spoke up without turning from the screens. “He needs to see a demo when he arrives next Friday.”  
  
Lu Han rubbed a hand down his face. “Friday. Jesus.”  
  
“People are looking for something to be hopeful about,” Minseok said. “Do you know the last time anyone thought it was safe enough to go to the beach? Anyway, it’s been coming. We can’t make any more progress if we don’t start outfitting these guys and hooking them into the actual thing.”  
  
“Yeah,” Lu Han said, setting his shoulders. “You’re right. But there’s no way Friday should be our first real test.”  
  
“Way ahead of you,” Minseok said. “How soon can we be ready for a dry run?”  
  
“Optimistically? Day after tomorrow. Which pilot are you thinking?”  
  
“You know them better than I do.”  
  
Lu Han had to be objective. Chimera Nine didn’t only belong to himself. “Jongin’s our best option.”  
  
“Good,” Minseok said, then abruptly socked Lu Han in the arm. “Tell the truth, what do you keep calling me in Chinese?”  
  
In the end, the drop score stood at Jongin: 6, Yixing: 4. Jongin’s hair was sweaty and molded to the shape of his skull when Lu Han helped him take off the headset. Lu Han briefly forgot his own status of authority as he mussed up Jongin’s hair into something vaguely rockabilly.  
  
“We’re testing by the end of the week. Are you ready for her?”  
  
Jongin merely grinned around the glove between his teeth as he stripped off the other one, looking tired and sore and like he couldn’t imagine doing anything else.  
  
Lu Han passed Jongin off to Minseok for a more thorough debrief, then gave Yixing a hand inside the second conn-pod. “That was great,” he said, but Yixing was distracted. His head was down, bangs wilted over his eyes.  
  
“Could you look away for a second?”  
  
“Are you bleeding?” Lu Han realized.  
  
Yixing swiped a hand under his nose. The side of his palm came away streaked red. “I get these all the time in the winter,” he explained.  
  
“We need to get you to Zhou Mi. Why didn’t you—what if there’s some kind of internal damage—”  
  
“What’s ‘calm down’ in Korean?” Yixing said.  
  
“Fuck off,” Lu Han said, but now he wanted to laugh, an anxious bubble of sound in his throat. “This isn’t a joke.”  
  
“I’m not joking, I really want to know. How do you say it?”  
  
Lu Han told him. Yixing echoed it back, the blood already beginning to dry on his face and hand, oxidized like rusted iron, which was the metal at its most vibrant and impure.   
  
  
-  
  
  
Nothing happened until five minutes after they’d secured the conn-pod onto the Jaeger body, initiated the Pons, and Chimera Nine took her first breath. Her nuclear core pulsed like a heartbeat in the distance, a couple hundred meters from the observation tower. So intensely blue that Lu Han’s own body tuned to it nervously.  
  
“We’re officially online,” he said. “How’re you feeling?”  
  
“Good.” Jongin sounded distorted, and his blood pressure was a little high, but that was within the realm of normal. “Tell me what you need, boss.”  
  
“Let’s see you walk first,” Minseok said, because they were in his territory now. “Once we establish basic functionality, we can move on to combat performance.”  
  
Jongin’d done this plenty of times before: in the lab linked to individual mecha limbs, in the Jaeger Sim with a virtual approximation. It made it easy to forget that this was still all just uncharted territory, which Lu Han sat over like a child god, making ripples. Jongin’s BP kept climbing on the screen. Chimera Nine landed a step forward, then froze.  
  
“Lu Han,” Jongdae called out, at the same time Lu Han saw it too. “Something’s up with his motor cortex.”  
  
“His muscles are locking up,” Lu Han said, and then louder, into the radio, “Jongin, I need an update—”  
  
They were five minutes into the dry run when Jongin started to seize.  
  
“Fuck,” Minseok launched himself at the manual controls as Lu Han watched numbly, “fuck, fuck,  _fuck_.”  
  
Jongin suffered a long, horrible minute of violent convulsions before he lost consciousness. Chimera Nine went rigid in front of the observation tower. Without a pilot in control, she started to fall. The sound she made, the groaning buckle of machinery, rang unforgivingly in Lu Han’s ears.  
  
Minseok had to shut Chimera Nine down remotely, forcibly detaching the conn-pod from the rest of the body. A team of Jaeger techs broke in the escape hatch to drag out Jongin’s unresponsive form. He was hanging limply from the metal rigs and wiring that supported his drivesuit armor. Inside his helmet, a thick gash ran across his forehead, nose and chin wet with warm blood. Both arms had twisted at odd angles from the fall.  
  
They got him to the Shatterdome’s critical care unit. Lu Han stuck around long enough to hear that Jongin’d stabilized. Then he ran to the nearest bathroom to kneel in front of a toilet and throw up. His body went through the motions easily. He’d already been here before. He already knew how this ended.  
  
  
-  
  
  
“You okay in there?”  
  
Lu Han wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and stumbled out of the stall. “Fine,” he rasped.  
  
Minseok stayed back, silent as Lu Han rinsed his mouth out at the sink. His reflection in the mirror was utterly drained. “What the hell happened?”  
  
“It’s on me. The weight of the neural load triggered a seizure—god, if this’d happened in front of Joonmyun—”  
  
“One thing at a time,” Minseok said gently. “First: Jongin’s down for the count.”  
  
Lu Han splashed some water on his face and tried to get a fucking grip. “Sehun’s next, technically,” he muttered.  
  
Minseok shook his head. “We can’t put Sehun in a Jaeger after today. He’s even younger than Jongin.”  
  
“We need to call off Friday altogether.”  
  
“We can’t do that,” Minseok said, which Lu Han already knew. “What about Zhang Yixing?”  
  
Lu Han reeled around to face him, skin dripping, cold. “You’re not honestly—”  
  
“If he pulls off a successful demo, it’s a step forward for international unity. If he doesn’t, at least that’s not another under-thirty Korean national treasure we almost put in a coma.”  
  
“No, it’ll just be someone else,” Lu Han argued.  
  
Minseok didn’t flinch. “Do you think the Kaiju are just going to wait around for us to get our shit together? Forget the funding. How many people could Chimera Nine save if we got her up and running in time?”  
  
A dark, urgent nausea razed through Lu Han’s stomach. “Don’t turn this into a numbers game.”  
  
“Yixing’s an adult who volunteered by his own choice. You told me from the beginning that he’d be a good pilot. I mean, fuck, Lu Han, he’s been your top pick since he got here.”  
  
“Then maybe I’m wrong! Did you forget less than a year ago he couldn’t walk?”  
  
“You don’t trust he can get the job done?”  
  
That word again. Lu Han’s belief in Yixing wasn’t a problem. Yixing’s physical aptitude was a class below Jongin’s, but he knew how to play ball in the combat simulation. Yifan’d told Lu Han: If you meet him, you’ll get it. A decade later and you’re still a cryptic dick, Lu Han’d said, then, revelatory: Crypdick. But Yifan had been right, Lu Han’d understood instantly. You needed to witness Yixing in person. Surround yourself with him as if he were a greenhouse, feeding a light into you.  
  
“Not enough to lock him inside my fifty-story deathtrap,” Lu Han said.  
  
“Okay,” Minseok said. “So you don’t trust yourself.”  
  
Stay friends with anyone for upwards of ten years and you inevitably ran into the danger of them being more familiar with some of your dirty laundry than you were yourself. Minseok in particular had a knack for whittling it down, making you look straight at it.  
  
“Don’t say it like that,” Lu Han said. “You make me sound like some kind of navel-gazing asshole.”  
  
Minseok snorted and held his arms open. Lu Han sagged into the hug, making Minseok pitch backwards for a second before he recovered and gave Lu Han a rough squeeze.   
  
“Hey,” Minseok said. “You’re not a navel-gazing asshole.”  
  
“Thanks,” Lu Han laughed, exhausted, into Minseok’s shoulder.  
  
  
-  
  
  
Jongin woke up four days after. According to Zhou Mi, he was processing stimuli pretty well again. Lu Han visited, and they sat in tense half-silence for a lifetime until Jongin said, “It didn’t feel like the Sim.”  
  
“What was different?”  
  
“The connection to the Jaeger felt more stable in the Sim,” Jongin said. “Yixing-hyung or Sehun were always there. This time—everything was heavier. Felt like I couldn’t carry all the weight by myself.”  
  
“I’m sorry about what happened,” Lu Han managed.  
  
Jongin laid back and closed his eyes. “I’m on so many drugs right now, doc. Don’t be a buzzkill. We each knew what we were getting into.”  
  
Lu Han haunted the gym for an hour, taking a page out of Yixing’s book and unloading every helpless thought into a punching bag. Yixing himself never showed up. When Lu Han stopped by the rec room afterwards on an impulse, he couldn’t tell whether or not he’d expected this: Yixing patiently waiting, sitting on top of the ping pong table, tossing a ball in the air.  
  
Yixing hopped off the table surface. “I was looking for you. First to twenty-one wins?”  
  
He was holding out a second ping pong paddle. Lu Han reached forward to accept it. “What do I win?”  
  
“I’ll treat you to lunch sometime.”  
  
“What about you? What do you win?”  
  
“I want to fly Chimera Nine for the demo,” Yixing told him.  
  
“Those don’t sound like equal stakes,” Lu Han said, after a long moment, taking his place at the opposite end of the table.  
  
“It’d be a really good lunch,” Yixing said.  
  
  
-  
  
  
15-7 in Yixing’s favor, Yixing finally said, “You’re not doing so great.”  
  
“Is that your idea of trash-talk?”  
  
“I’m not going to torture a man while he’s down.”  
  
It was true; Lu Han was off his game. He smashed the ball into the net and swore. “Shit, fuck. Did you give me a rigged paddle?”  
  
Yixing kept a straight face. “Do you want to swap? Here, take mine. I don’t need it, I can beat you with my bare hands.”  
  
Lu Han smiled despite himself. The next thing he knew, his weakness was slipping out of him: “Even if you win, don’t do the demo on Friday.”  
  
Yixing caught the ball in mid-air instead of hitting it back. His eyes flickered up to Lu Han’s face. “I already told Minseok yes.”  
  
“Right,” Lu Han said on an exhalation, “of course you did.”  
  
“You didn’t want me for the dry run,” Yixing said. “And that’s okay, I’m not upset. Jongin was the right choice. But he can’t do this for you anymore. I can.”  
  
“Jongin can’t do it because I almost got him killed and now he’s laid up in ICU,” Lu Han said, feeling brittle. “And you want to trade places?”  
  
Yixing’s posture ironed out stubbornly. “I want to do what I can. People close to me keep telling me to stay back while they’re out getting hurt. It’s a little annoying.”  
  
But people close to Lu Han got hurt too. He’d given over five years of his life to BIT, developing the Pons in its baby form. By the time he’d had enough, he had a dead body and two hospitalizations on his hands. The Institute had pumped up Lu Han’s paycheck, trying to incentivize him to stay. After all, military test accidents were nothing new. Lu Han was bright and promising. A bloody past could be sterilized. The problem was when Lu Han finally decided he’d rather stay raw than turn cold.  
  
“I don’t want you—or anyone else—to get hurt,” Lu Han said.  
  
Yixing studied Lu Han’s face, muted but intent. He said, “So watch my back for me,” and when he finally won, 21-10, Lu Han knew he had to, he didn’t care how, he’d pilot the fucking Jaeger himself to keep Yixing safe.  
  
  
-  
  
  
Joonmyun’s helicopter arrived early afternoon and everyone was on their best behavior. Jongdae wore an actual tie to work, referred to Joonmyun as _kwanjangnim_  behind his back, and to his face said, “Can I get you some water?”  
  
Lu Han coughed, “Suck up,” discreetly into his sleeve.  
  
“Job security,” Jongdae muttered back.  
  
“Water would be nice,” Joonmyun said, slightly flustered. He was a good-looking and unassuming guy, easy to like, but unavoidably an outsider. When Kim Joonmyun showed up at the Shatterdome, people knew why he was there. The pressure to deliver returns on the PPDC’s international investment was suffocating. Minseok’d managed to keep a cool head, but ever since Jongin, Lu Han’d felt like a time bomb.  
  
They saw each other half an hour before the demo. Yixing was reporting in to mission control, wearing the black, slim circuitry suit that Lu Han’d made. They didn’t get a real chance to talk, but as Yixing walked past, Lu Han pulled out of his conversation with Joonmyun in order to grab Yixing’s arm instead. Yixing turned, his gaze refocusing, finding Lu Han. He smelled like oil and rubber and metal instead of the usual inexplicable vanilla.  
  
“Stay focused and keep your head clear. Don’t let the Pons overwhelm you.”  
  
A softness flashed across Yixing’s face. “Are you saying I have your blessing now?”  
  
Lu Han knocked his fist against Yixing’s shoulder. “Make an honest mecha out of her.”  
  
Yixing grinned. Then he was gone.  
  
  
-  
  
  
“So far so good,” Jongdae told Lu Han as they kept their eyes on the status of Yixing’s neural link. “How’d you fix the Pons?”  
  
With hours of re-coding, running Yixing over and over in the Sim with Sehun, midnight sessions with Minseok as they brainstormed over a six-pack of beer. It seemed to have paid off: Chimera Nine was walking. The impact of her feet against the earth,  _boom, boom_ , shook through the observation tower. Lu Han felt the vibrations in his spine, as if he was there inside of her too.  
  
He flipped the radio on. “How’re we doing?”  
  
“Not—bad,” Yixing said.  
  
“Tell him to take his time,” Minseok said. Joonmyun stood behind him as they observed the Jaeger’s gray-blue body commanding the main monitor. “When he’s ready, we’ll try out the targeting systems.”  
  
“I’m ready,” said Yixing, once Lu Han translated.  
  
Lu Han exchanged a quick glance with Minseok, who nodded. “Let’s start with the particle cannons.”  
  
Chimera Nine was responding well. It was everyone’s first time truly seeing her in action, and even after pouring over Minseok’s blueprints, watching her get sculpted piece by piece, Lu Han still hadn’t imagined her to be this big. She was rough around the edges, missing a paint job and the vanity decal. No gloss, just tacit strength, Minseok’s design to the core. A down and dirty fighter. Cannons rose like wings from her shoulders, the titanium alloy reflecting sunlight.  
  
“Shit,” Joonmyun murmured in wonderment.  
  
“Yeah,” Lu Han agreed. “Cannons are activated. 500 meter test shoot in three, two—”  
  
“Lu Han, wait,” Yixing’s voice fizzled in.  
  
Chimera Nine jerked bodily.  
  
Lu Han’s chest iced over right before the alarms went off.  
  
“Get him out of there,” Minseok shouted, as Yixing’s nervous system was overloaded. Joonmyun raised a hand to cover his mouth as Chimera Nine lost control all over again. In the airforce, pilots who lived through multiple plane ejections had to be permanently grounded. Human bodies couldn’t take that kind of repeated trauma. Chimera Nine was seventy meters tall and Jongin had barely walked out of her alive. Yixing wouldn’t make it through another fall.  
  
“Sehun,” Lu Han heard himself say, mind racing, something clicking inside. “Where the hell is Sehun?”  
  
Not close enough. Other pilots weren’t authorized to be in mission control. Fuck it, Lu Han thought wildly, and grabbed Sehun's Pons headset from reserve.  
  
Minseok was right behind him. “Hey, slow down—”   
  
“Jongdae, I need you to bridge me in.”  
  
“What are you  _doing_?”  
  
“Our approach has been all wrong,” Lu Han jammed on the headset, “the Sim had two pilots branched from the same neural link and  _that’s_  why it wasn’t as heavy, it’s because they were sharing the load.”  
  
“We need to think this through,” Minseok said, his voice tight, but Chimera Nine crumpled to her knees on the monitor, and Lu Han couldn’t keep doing this. He couldn’t watch another one.  
  
“Maybe later,” Lu Han gritted out, and to Jongdae, “Let’s go.”  
  
The next shock of acute pain found him like a home.  
  
  
-  
  
  
There was water.  
  
Fire and smoke, but above all else water. Deep, blue, thick enough to choke on, throwing itself in waves against Lu Han’s body. It smelled like iron as it crashed over Lu Han’s head, filling his nose and ears and mouth. The current pushed him further and further down. Helplessness tumbled through Lu Han’s chest. Not his own. This wasn’t his memory. The bottom of the lake was endlessly black, and inside the chasm something was moving, rumbling.   
  
When Lu Han broke through the surface, he found the Manila sky burning. Yixing with his back turned, holding onto a long life raft.  
  
“Yixing,” Lu Han said. “Yixing, look at me.”  
  
He swam closer as the water fought him, loss radiating off of Yixing in a physical current. “Yixing,” Lu Han tried again.  
  
Yixing spun around, face clouded and uncomprehending. His life raft twisted to float face-up in the water. It had dark red hair.   
  
Shakily, Lu Han helped push Yixing’s plastered wet hair away from his forehead. When there was no more left, he kept doing it anyway, smoothing the back of his knuckles down Yixing’s cheeks, wiping the blue blood off his face.  
  
All around them, the lake thinned out. Yixing’s eyes cleared in recognition. His lips parted.  
  
“What’re you doing here?” he croaked.  
  
Lu Han almost laughed. “I have no fucking clue,” he said, but he could hear the rescue mission closing in above. Once the helicopter had flown low enough, a ladder came down. Lu Han came down on the ladder. He reached his hand down and pulled Yixing out of the water.


	2. cathedral city (kris/lu han)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> popstars on the run, more news at 11!

  
  
  
They take the same flight to PEK but disperse from there. Zitao has an hour to catch his connecting so he runs off first, but updates everyone once he’s boarded:  _I made it! Hzt daebak!_  
  
“You guys should get going if you don’t want to hit traffic,” Yixing adds, holed up in a café with time to kill.   
  
Kris snorts, “It’s Beijing.”  
  
Lu Han mimes shooting himself in the mouth.  
  
It’s Beijing, so the two of them wilt inside the car for an hour and a half with the AC blasting in their faces. Their manager honks long and hard at the SUV cutting him off. Lu Han hits the window and wakes up with a jump. He rubs his eyes, un-pretzels his body. Lu Han’s a kicker whenever he has to share a bed; you either relocate in the middle of the night of your own volition, or wait for Lu Han to do it for you and wake up on the floor with his footprint on your ass. But by himself, he leaves half of any space open, knees tucked up, his body bent into a young circle.  
  
“You have something on your,” Kris motions to Lu Han’s cheek. Lu Han blinks groggily at him and wipes off the shiny smear of drool.   
  
They drop Lu Han off for a polite evening with his parents. The day after news came back about their time off, he’d revealed to Kris in private: “I’m not saying I’m not happy for a break, but--an entire week at home?” It was hard for him to talk about it with Yixing, who listened well but didn’t understand, but Kris had his own daddy issues in spades.   
  
“You want my opinion?” Kris’d said, and when Lu Han nodded, told him, “Don’t stay at home.”  
  
Which makes it Kris’ own fault that a month later he’s eating ramen out of a styrofoam bowl instead of his mom’s cooking. Lounging around their empty China dorm with an unshakable sense of distance, as if he’s a trespasser in his own life. No memory of what he does with his time alone.  
  
He confirms tomorrow’s hotel reservation. He goes to the gym, video calls his mom, does the dishes, and passes out by 11. Wakes up again past midnight with Lu Han spooned up against him.  
  
“Something better be on fire.”  
  
“Kind of,” says Lu Han. Even through his underwear, the outline of his dick is hot against Kris’ ass.  
  
Kris is exhausted, but it’s been weeks since he got any action. Lu Han’s bare legs tangled around his own ignites a sleepy arousal in the pit of his stomach. “Weren’t you practically a coma patient when you left?”  
  
“I bounced back,” Lu Han says. “You up for it? I’ll do all the work.”  
  
Their manager is down the hall, but they’ve done worse. Kris rolls onto his back and pulls Lu Han down on top of him by his skinny hips.  
  
He loses track of how long they drag out the lazy kissing, groping, but his lips are sore and his dick’s hard by the time Lu Han finally strips off his pajama pants and sucks him off. It takes more than usual to get Kris off, but Lu Han doesn’t seem to be in a hurry. The hour’s already late anyway. Kris is grateful for the dark. He knows he looks like a disaster right now, and part of him doesn’t want to know how Lu Han looks; to watch and ruin the drowsy eagerness of Lu Han sliding up and down his cock, mouth all soft and lush, throat struggling and then learning to accept. Kris’ body feels almost drugged. He comes, heels digging into the bed, his heartbeat throbbing in his dick.  
  
Lu Han takes dirty advantage of Kris’ pliancy to kiss him again with tongue, pushing Kris’ come back into his mouth and making him swallow it with a low groan. He ruts against Kris’ thigh with greedy little thrusts, taking care of himself. Kris, unwilling to be a complete asshole, reaches down to pump Lu Han through his fist, tight and unrelenting until Lu Han’s breath hitches. He goes off like a stick of dynamite, his face hidden against Kris’ shoulder.   
  
They do the bare minimum of cleaning up. They fall asleep together. Kris has to wake up again two hours later before Lu Han can finish punching him off his own bed.  
  
  
  
_**beijing→xi’an**_  
  
Lu Han drives like a monster. You can take the boy out of Beijing but you can never take Beijing out of the boy, even Lu Han with his dual citizenship heart. Kris hands his wallet over at the toll road, even though Lu Han’s pulling in a bigger paycheck than him this year, and then they’re on the G5, where Lu Han makes good time by using opposing lanes of traffic to cut past slower cars.  
  
“Turn around,” Kris says, gripping the safety handle tight. “I changed my mind.”  
  
“This is a whiny-baby-free zone,” Lu Han says. “Wait, you’re kidding, right?”  
  
Kris deadpans, “No, I’m not. Turn around,” three-fourths kidding.  
  
The one-fourth is the fraction of Kris that’d privately agreed with Minseok when Minseok asked about his plans and Kris said he was roadtripping with Lu Han and Minseok said, bemused, “Huh, cool,” the way  _Huh, cool_  was the only good response to something so far out of left field. “Where’re you guys headed?”  
  
Kris pointed out Lijiang on a map. Didn’t tell Minseok how it was one of the most romantic travel destinations in China. Did mention that the southwest was huge on hotpot, which piqued Minseok’s wistful envy. Neither was the actual reason why. Lu Han’d zeroed in on Lijiang because it was on a straight diagonal from Beijing, the opposite corner of the country, a generous 36-hour drive.  
  
“That’s intense,” Minseok said. “Is it gonna be one of those life-affirming things? Next time I see you, you’ll be a renewed man?”  
  
“Uh, no,” Kris laughed, nervous for no definable reason. Between himself and Lu Han he couldn’t think of anyone worse to play Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love.  
  
Later Lu Han said, “I don’t think any of us would complain if you wanted to renew yourself into someone who knows how to follow basic choreography.”  
  
“Enjoy your trip,” Kris said, moonwalking out of the bedroom. “By yourself.”  
  
“No takebacks!” Lu Han called after him.  
  
No takebacks, Kris reminds himself. He’s already inside the car. The car is moving forward. The honest fact of it helps relax him. He hooks his iPod to the stereo and selects some inoffensive, universal Leehom song to play.  
  
The first day goes by in total boredom. Mid-afternoon, they stop for gas and food. Nobody at the rest area gives them a second glance. While Lu Han hovers over an ice cream freezer, Kris checks his messages and shoots a mercy text to their manager, who has filled his inbox with increasingly shouty pleas for Lu Han to  _TURN ON HIS GODDAMN PHONE_.   
  
Lu Han holds up a pair of different ice cream bars in each hand. “Coffee, milk, green bean or red bean?”  
  
Kris looks up from his phone. “Coffee, no contest.”  
  
Lu Han tosses it over. “You realize there’s actually zero caffeine in those.”  
  
“I’m counting on a placebo effect,” Kris says. “Taozi says ‘Hey’ and wants to know where we are.”  
  
Lu Han presses one of the bars to his cheek, where the skin is stained pink from sun exposure. “Like halfway there? The GPS says six more hours but I can cut it down to five and a half.”  
  
“I could take over driving, if you want a break.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
Kris shrugs. “It’ll give me something to do while my ass goes numb.”  
  
“Still better than some of the alternatives.” Lu Han pays for them both, to make up for the earlier toll, and adds over his shoulder, “A couple of my friends had to take an overnight sleeper train to Xi’an once. They said it was a nightmare.”  
  
“You didn’t go too?”  
  
Lu Han tears the wrapper off and sticks his bar, milk-flavored, into his mouth. “I was Abroad,” he says, with the capital A, which is how all of them understood it, Kris especially. The capital of the United States of Displacement. You were a transplant gone bad. A foreign lung inside the wrong body.   
  
Lu Han moans, “Shit, brainfreeze,” squeezing his eyes shut.  
  
Whatever was inside that ice cream helps, because while Lu Han drifts in and out for the rest of the ride, the sun setting in orange waves across his face, Kris is wide awake, alone with his Drake playlist and flat green planes that rise into wooded mountains. It’d take around seven hours to travel the full length of South Korea and today they’re doing almost double that just to get to Xi’an. Kris spends so much time in Seoul that he forgets how big countries are capable of being. Same way it’s easy to forget, after seeing someone day after day, the depth of the landscape inside them. Lu Han existed in the world for two decades before they met. Kris hasn’t traveled close to half of him.  
  
As soon as they reach the city, they dump their bags at the hotel, find a nearby snack bar that’s open, and stuff themselves with cold noodles. Lu Han asks around a mouthful if Kris wants to sightsee. Kris says yeah, he could use the fresh air. The South Wall is a few blocks away. After thirteen hours trapped inside a car together, Kris is out of things to talk about, but he’s fine letting Lu Han guide him to gag souvenirs, sticking close to avoid being separated in the crush of strangers. They walk all the way down to the Buddhist pagoda. The pedestrian street is saturated with light, giving the sky an atomic glow. Clashing traditional and modern music plays from inside different shops and bars.   
  
“Do you wanna grab a beer?” Kris finds himself saying. He blames the sudden sense of anonymity.   
  
They’re in the historical sculpture park and Lu Han hasn’t moved for a full minute. His hair tumbles over his eyes when his head drops forward. His body sways left.  
  
No fucking way, Kris thinks. He catches Lu Han by the shoulder.   
  
Lu Han jerks back to consciousness. “Uh huh. That’s really interesting. What?”  
  
Kris’ chest flickers with an affection he doesn’t typically associate with Lu Han. “I said let’s get you to bed.”  
  
“Sorry.” Lu Han guiltily fights back a yawn that makes it out anyway. “It just snuck up on me. I promise I don’t think you’re that boring.”  
  
“Thanks for the glowing review,” Kris says, pretending to shove Lu Han into the fountain.   
  
Lu Han wins the first shower, his paper beating Kris’ rock. Kris flips on the TV, sits on the furthest hotel bed, and leans back to stare at the ceiling, trying to clear his head. The shower turns on a few moments later. He can hear the exact second Lu Han steps under it, how the sound of water softens as it rolls off Lu Han’s body.  
  
  
  
_**xi’an→chengdu**_  
  
Lu Han’s on the phone when Kris wakes up.  
  
“--tomorrow,” he’s saying. “It’s good so far. Lots of driving, more driving than sleeping. I don’t know. If I knew, I’d just tell you and I wouldn’t have to be here. Anyway, guess what, I got you a present. It’s not shaped like a dick! Scout’s honor. The hell is that supposed to mean--Hang on, duizhang’s up. Do you want to talk to Yixing?”  
  
Kris sits up, scratching his stomach through his wifebeater, and shakes his head, which feels fogged and heavy from too much sleep.   
  
“He doesn’t want to talk to you.” Lu Han smiles at whatever Yixing responds with. “Okay, me too. Bye-bye.”  
  
Checkout is in less than an hour. Kris slumps back against the pillows and watches Lu Han copy him in the other bed, an expression on his face like he’s thinking about something Kris can’t touch. Yixing’s in Changsha with family. Kris is pretty sure Lu Han could’ve gone too, Yixing’d given enough veiled invitations over the last month, but for whatever reason Lu Han hadn’t considered it a real option. Maybe it wasn’t what he needed. Maybe what he needed was overpriced gas, hole-in-the-wall food joints, hotel rooms soaked in carpet freshener. 24/7 with someone who didn’t represent home or work, but the weird neutral ground.   
  
Lu Han rolls onto his stomach. The self-conscious silence ends. “Are you hungry?”  
  
They grab breakfast-slash-lunch from a street vendor in the Muslim quarter and trade bites of each other’s  _rou jia mo_ , wandering under the shade of leafy trees. Then, because they're still hungry and every food stall they walk past smells amazing, Kris shells out a couple bucks for lamb skewers. He proceeds to dangle Lu Han’s out of reach.  
  
“ _C’mon_ , asshole.” Lu Han makes a futile jump for it. “You’d never treat Yixing this way.”  
  
“Just a little higher,” Kris encourages. Ten extra centimeters of height is more than enough. If there’s one thing he's good at, it’s playing keep away. “You almost had it.”  
  
“I can’t believe I asked you to come with me.”  
  
“Me neither.” Kris waves the skewer right in front of Lu Han's mouth. “Act fast.”  
  
Lu Han ducks forward to slide the first piece of lamb off between his teeth. After that, each time he glances up as they browse through trays of dried persimmons or sesame brittle, Kris extends his hand, holding the skewer steady.   
  
By noon they’re back on the highway. Around the six hour mark, when nothing on his iPod sounds good anymore but the threat of more silence is worse, Kris initiates a game of Would You Rather? Lu Han props his feet up on the dashboard and argues over the air roaring through the window why it’s better to eat a cockroach than fuck a dog. His hair blows wildly with the scent of generic hotel brand shampoo.  
  
“Once the cockroach’s dead, it’s dead,” Lu Han yells, “but you’re gonna have to look Fido in the eye afterwards.”  
  
This kind of shit, the entire way to Chengdu. Would you rather have dick-sized nipples or a nipple-sized dick? Would you rather fuck 70 year old Joonmyun or 10 year old Sehun? Would you rather sleep with your mom in your girlfriend's body or--  
  
Kris bursts out laughing. “What the hell? How are you coming up with these?”  
  
“Hold up, let me finish,” Lu Han says.  
  
“No, don't,” Kris says, “I pick you.” He smolders at Lu Han a little, to dull the implication. Lu Han gags.   
  
Full disclosure? The two of them have been each other’s multiple-night stand for four months. Five including the company party, but they’d both had a lot of champagne that night. Lu Han was handsy as fuck when he drank, but had the awareness to wrench his mouth away from Kris’ and drill him, Are you even into guys? Kris couldn’t handle how clichéd the whole affair was, down to the badly lit bathroom setting, Lu Han’s expensive tie mangled between his fingers, his own confused, tipsy desire. Are you? he shot back to hide his embarrassment. Lu Han laughed. Um, yeah. Where have you been?   
  
The band split up afterwards. Baekhyun and Jongdae had coerced a group into karaoke; Zitao was starving for seolleongtang. Following an extensive search, Kyungsoo found Jongin sleeping in the coatroom, POOR MAN’S LEE TAEMIN in marker across his forehead. Kris gently took him off Kyungsoo’s hands and said, We’ll catch a cab back home. I’ll come too, Lu Han said.   
  
Alone in the dorms, Lu Han took off his shirt and sat on the edge of his bed. Kris swallowed. He had no idea what came next. Not because it was a guy, but because the guy was Lu Han. Kris couldn’t think of a single day when he’d known without question what Lu Han wanted from him.  
  
“Hey,” Lu Han interrupted, face still flushed, eyes clearer. “This isn’t a test.”  
  
“It feels like one,” Kris joked. He saw the easy way out, and took it desperately. “Give me a hint.”   
  
It was easy because it challenged nothing. That didn’t mean the moment felt any smaller. Lu Han caught Kris by his belt loops, hooking him in with both thumbs, and Kris tripped the two paces forward.  
  
“Okay.” Lu Han seemed to have decided. He bent his head to kiss the bulge of Kris' zipper, open-mouthed. “That’s multiple choice A.”  
  
The oxygen flew out of Kris’ lungs. “Wow. What’s B?”  
  
Lu Han’s hands slid back, squeezed Kris’ ass before they bracketed his hips, lightly pushing. Kris followed them down until his knees met the floor. His mouth turned to cotton. Hot electricity fired across his synapses.  _Yes_ , it was saying.  
  
“B is when you do it to me,” Lu Han said.  
  
  
  
_**chengdu→lijiang**_  
  
They opt out of the standard Chengdu panda visit but make an effort to get their hands on panda-themed tourist merch for Zitao. Panda stuffed toy. Panda shot glass. A keychain with two happy cartoon pandas doing it in the missionary position.  
  
“Oh my god,” says Lu Han, awed, as Kris flips the charm over to discover equally cheerful doggy style on the other side.  
  
Kris immediately whips his phone out to send Zitao a picture.  _Found your nudes_ , he teases.  
  
_I CAN EXPLAIN,_  Zitao messages him back thirty seconds later.  
  
Right afterwards:  _oh I get it Haha ignore the previous text_  
  
Kris stares at his phone. Lu Han’s laughing so hard he falls into a rack of panda t-shirts.  
  
The car has begun its transformation into a junkyard on wheels: receipts, wrappers, the pillow kept on call in the backseat, the growing laundry of shirts and underwear they’ve sweat through in muggy hundred-degree weather. A couple days' build up of empty water bottles and fast food and a distinct lingering boy smell. They’re ahead of schedule today, so Lu Han takes a detour that leads them to Qionghai lake. Kris has never heard of it, but they stay long enough to let the car air out. Nobody’s around except a couple fishermen and their large golden dog. Kris sits all the way down the narrow concrete pier and watches seagulls skim across the surface before flying off again. Lu Han hangs out elsewhere, walking alone where the grass turns to wet sand, collecting rocks off the lakeshore and skipping them across the water. Each ripple disturbs the gray-blue reflection of clouds, until the entire lake seems irreversibly changed.  
  
Soon Lu Han comes to retrieve him. “Your turn to drive,” he says, brushing his palms clean on his shorts.  
  
“Gimme a few more minutes,” Kris says, so Lu Han finally sits too, surrounded by trees and cocooned into a slow-moving pocket of the world.  
  
His phone goes off later while he's behind the wheel. “It’s manager-hyung,” Lu Han reads off the screen. “Let it go to voicemail?”  
  
“Not unless you want a manhunt. Can you get it?”  
  
Lu Han picks up and deepens his voice. “This is Wu Yifan speaking. Haha.”  
  
Kris bites back a grin and keeps his eyes on the road, listening to Lu Han answer with a string of Yes and No's. Yes, we’ve eaten. Yes, we're staying on the DL. No partying. No girls. No cops.  
  
“What does that mean?” Lu Han says. Kris half turns towards him, but Lu Han doesn’t look back. “Okay, but you told me. Hyung.”  
  
“What’s going on?” Kris says.  
  
Lu Han shakes his head. “I know that--hyung. Come on, that’s not fair. No, he’s driving.”  
  
“Speaker,” Kris says.  
  
Lu Han puts the phone on speaker, places it on the center console, and leans his elbow against the window, scrubbing his hand through his hair.  
  
Company execs want them back earlier than planned. Apparently they don’t appreciate this particular interpretation of the phrase “time off.” You weren’t going to keep everyone in the dark forever, their manager says. Receiving the green light from him alone had cost a week of promises and full-on groveling. Proof of a detailed itinerary, pre-booked lodging, plus Kris’ persuasive charm and good looks. Kim Youngmin didn’t have to know. Except now Kim Youngmin does know and probably has some kind of S.M.E. SWAT team on speed dial, ready for the moment Kris makes a wrong move.  
  
Lu Han is waiting for the verdict when he hangs up. Kris' stomach turns itself into a rock. “We can skip Chongqing on the way back.”  
  
“Just like that?” says Lu Han.  
  
Kris rubs the back of his neck and tries to diffuse the situation. “It isn’t that bad. You have to weigh it against the seven days we did get.”  
  
“Six. We’re forfeiting one for the return drive,” Lu Han says. “The fuck do they care where we go? We’re on vacation, not going AWOL.”  
  
“Look, you knew we were on a leash when we started.”  
  
The set of Lu Han’s jaw tightens. “Are you really going to keep doing that?”  
  
“Doing what?”  
  
“Acting like you didn’t need this trip just as much as me.”  
  
Kris doesn’t have a response ready for that one. He loses his chance as Lu Han flips the radio back on. I KNOW YOU WANT IT, I KNOW YOU WANT IT, BUT YOU’RE A GOOD GIRL booms through the speakers, and Kris nearly rear-ends the car ahead of them, mashing at the volume controls until Robin Thicke fucks off. Lu Han blows a puff of air through his mouth and gazes out the window.   
  
He’s asleep fifteen minutes later, which is when Kris pulls over onto the highway shoulder. He drops his forehead against the steering wheel and lets himself have sixty seconds. He and Lu Han skipped a couple important steps when they went from friends to fuckbuddies, like the step where they were supposed to magically learn how to talk to each other.   
  
Lu Han's chin tips forward against his chest. Kris reaches across Lu Han’s lap for the seat lever to recline him as far back as possible. He borrows the pillow from the backseat. If this were a movie, Lu Han would be pretending. Or he'd be waking up just in time to register Kris' hands as they fix him into a comfortable position. He’d just know, automatically, he’d know where Kris stood, what had brought Kris all the way out here in the first place. And Kris would know, too. Lu Han only shifts restlessly in his sleep. A piece of hair falls over his face. Kris drags his eyes away and puts the car back into drive.  
  
  
  
_**lijiang**_  
  
Lijiang is cool in the mornings, enough that Kris has to dig out his sweaters. Lu Han forgot to pack anything besides thin cotton t-shirts, so he steals one of Kris’ thicker cardigans, which makes him look prepubescently skinny. Neither of them thought to bring an umbrella. Their tiny hotel is designed around a courtyard with a fishpond, light rain coming in between the wood-furnished houses. The owner Mrs. Yan, a woman in her early 40s with a nice husband and no kids, sometimes sits out on the veranda brewing tea for guests. “You have such interesting hair,” she’d complimented when they'd checked in yesterday. Lu Han’d smiled shyly, tugging his beanie further down over the bleached mess, and thanked her, calling her  _lao ban_  until she told him auntie was fine. The chances of her knowing who they are is slim to none. Either way, Kris takes the time to shave that morning. The planet is full of camera phones.  
  
Up on the snow mountain, the temperature drops another ten degrees. Lu Han shivers his way up the cable car ride and elevation checkpoints, arms hugged around his body and hands jammed under his armpits. He uses Kris for both a wind shield and space heater. Kris retains warmth like a polar bear, which always makes him popular in these moments. Lu Han slips his cold hands under the back of Kris’ sweater at random intervals, above the thin undershirt. Funny how intuitive an action like that can be, when meeting each other’s eyes sometimes feels like pulling teeth.  
  
A path of boulders leads away from the observation platform, into the vast expanse of snow where the number of tourists thins out. Lu Han goes first, arms winged outwards in case he slips. Kris pushes his sunglasses up into his hair to get a better look at the view, the clouds below him so dense it’s like a fog, the valley rocky green and bottomless. The altitude has yet to make him dizzy, but he’s vaguely aware of his heart beating a little faster, his lungs working a little harder for air. It’s easy to confuse with another kind of biological response. He looks at Lu Han and feels winded.  
  
“Hey, about yesterday.”  
  
Lu Han snaps another picture of white mountain peaks against an immeasurably blue sky. “Yesterday?”  
  
“What happened in the car,” Kris says. “I should’ve handled that conversation better.”  
  
“It’s not all on you. I overreacted.”  
  
“I just wanted to apologize.”  
  
Lu Han flashes him a perfunctory smile. “Don’t sweat it.”  
  
Kris smiles back, kind of doubtful. Then again, in all the time he’s known Lu Han, he’s found that it’s pretty standard for Lu Han to reel people in, then shy away when they come freely.   
  
With the time crunch, an ambitious sense of tourism takes ahold of them both. They hang around Old Town Lijiang that afternoon, exploring Mu Palace and then the dreamy maze of bridges that arc across narrow waterways, willows overhanging the greenstone path. Kris buys a pair of handcrafted earrings for his mom. Lu Han buys a wooden prayer card to hang up with a thousand others, swaying with a hollow clatter whenever there’s a breeze. Kris sneaks a peek at the wish Lu Han wrote down as he’s attaching the card to the pitched wooden roof.  
  
“Hey!” Lu Han says, and slaps his palm over Kris’ eyes. Kris raises both hands in surrender.   
  
“I didn’t think you were superstitious.”  
  
“I’m not.”  
  
Eyes closed, Kris can hear the running brook, the gentle scuff of Lu Han’s sneakers. “What does it say?”  
  
Lu Han gradually drops his hand. “It says I want a pony.”  
  
Actually:  _For my family, good health and a Lu Han they can be proud of. For my friends, infinite happiness. For EXO, the world!_  At the bottom, Kris reads,  _For myself, growth and acceptance_.  
  
They carve out a half hour of downtime back at the hotel that both of them spend on their phones. Lu Han has this ongoing Candy Crush pissing contest with Jongin. Kris weeds through a hundred texts from Chanyeol, who sprained his wrist mountain-biking on the first day of their vacation and is coping with bedrest by spamming everyone with pictures of the R-rated graffiti on his cast. Later Mrs. Yan helps them choose someplace to eat dinner. On her suggestion, they go out for hotpot that’s so spicy Kris starts to cry.  
  
“It’s alright,” Lu Han soothes, even patting Kris’ back, the piece of shit, “let it all out. You’ve been under a lot of stress.”  
  
“Shut up or you’ll be under a lot of stress.” Kris wipes his leaking face and chugs his tea, which doesn’t help. His tongue has gone numb. “Fuck. I need a drink.”  
  
“I’ll go ask,” Lu Han says, and reappears with baijiu. Kris fills and refills Lu Han’s glass until he’s as red as Kris is, burying his face in Kris’ shoulder when he laughs over Kris’ stupid observations. His skin glows, almost too hot to touch. Kris is very conscious, in a hazy detached way, of where his hands are positioned on his body, cartoonishly large. He places the left one against the dip of Lu Han’s lower back. An instant reaction rolls down Lu Han’s spine. Kris manages not to swallow his own tongue.  
  
When it’s time, Lu Han pays the bill. “I’m older than you,” he asserts.  
  
“I’m the leader,” Kris says. His face is doing a weird thing. He thinks he’s trying to pout.  
  
“Yeah, well, you’re off-duty for another day,” Lu Han says. “Take advantage of it.”  
  
So Kris leans forward and says, “Don’t I owe you a beer?”  
  
Four hours later they make it back from Bar Street. The hotel courtyard is barely lit but the black pond glitters with fish scales, bewitched and otherworldly. It takes Kris three tries to slide their room key home. Inside, Lu Han kicks his shoes off and sits heavily on his bed. Kris hands him a water bottle from one of their bags. “Drink that,” he says as he strips down to his undershirt and briefs. His own buzz is fading at the edges. When he glances over his shoulder, Lu Han is burritoing himself inside the duvet. “No, hey, clothes off first. You gotta follow your own rules.”  
  
Lu Han’s rules, which everyone who’s ever roomed with him knows by heart, start with ‘Don’t wear dirty clothes in bed,’ and end ten bullet points later with a reiteration: Don’t wear dirty clothes in bed, motherfucker.   
  
Lu Han undoes the button of his jeans, gives up and calls it a day. Kris decides to help him out. He takes off Lu Han’s jeans and socks and throws them onto a chair. The shirt requires Lu Han’s participation, so Lu Han sits up with some effort and moves his arms where Kris tells him to. Lamp light flickers across his chest, shadowing his ribs and long neck. By the time they’re done, Kris is strangely exhausted. He splashes water on his face in the bathroom and sleepwalks through his skincare routine, applying his moisturizer twice because he isn’t paying attention. Lu Han’s bent over his phone when Kris comes back out. He aims the camera up and snaps a picture.  
  
“I thought you were going to bed.” Kris sits next to him and grabs for the phone. Lu Han lets him have it, lifting the water bottle in his other hand.  
  
“Like you said, hangover prevention first.”  
  
Kris scrolls through the rest of the gallery, from the beginning where Lu Han tried to capture some scenery through the car window and the autofocus locked onto the water stains in the glass instead. The Xi’an pictures are almost exclusively of food. There are landscapes, selcas, a series of Kris in front of different landmarks, sunglasses on, the same deliberate half-smile on his face. Another series of more candid shots, Kris driving, facing another direction, dead to the world in the passenger seat. The second-to-most-recent photo is one Kris took at the bar tonight. Lu Han, bright and flushed, posing with a cute local girl he met who tried to teach him to tie maraschino cherry stems with his tongue.  
  
The actual most recent one is of Kris from three minutes ago, standing in the bathroom doorway looking at Lu Han, the yellow light behind him making him soft and uncertain.   
  
Lu Han passes the water bottle, falls backwards, and Kris takes a huge gulp to cure his dry mouth. Clear out a path from his chest to his throat.  
  
“I wanted to tell you--uh. Well.”  
  
“Just say it,” Lu Han says, as if neither of them has, individually, a volume of intimacy problems large enough to erode a continental shelf.  
  
“I’m happy you asked me to come,” Kris says. “Really, I’m glad.”  
  
It takes Lu Han a minute to respond. “I wasn’t planning on asking anyone. I was just going to go.”  
  
“I figured,” Kris says. Anyone could’ve guessed that. Lu Han already had a map marked up before he ever came to Kris. “Why didn’t you?”  
  
Lu Han grins up at him. “It was cheaper to split gas money.”  
  
Even when drunk, Lu Han’s a pro, but it’s been almost a week and Kris is done looking away. “Ask me why I said yes.”  
  
“Why’d you say yes?”  
  
Kris cards his fingers through his hair, and isn’t sure what he’s going to say until he’s saying it: “To take a risk.”  
  
“On what?” Lu Han asks. “The roadtrip? Me?”  
  
“All of it. Like if I put a couple thousand miles between me and my comfort zone, I’d find someplace where I could get out of my own way.” Kris finally lies down, him on his stomach, Lu Han on his back. “Now your turn.”  
  
Lu Han shrugs. He rubs at his eyes with the side of his palm, then keeps them closed. “I dunno. I think--it’s easy to just run off by yourself; that’s just escapism. It’s harder with another person, you know? Cause then someone else is there with you, seeing you when you don’t always want to be seen.”  
  
Kris’ heart hammers around his ribcage like a pinball machine. “But you wanted me to,” he says.   
  
“Yeah,” Lu Han says slowly. “I guess I did.”  
  
They lie there for awhile. Kris reaches down and, after a beat of hesitation, lifts Lu Han’s hand and touches his mouth to the back of his knuckles. Lu Han peeks his eyes open. “Sleep,” he says, but Kris doesn’t, not until Lu Han drifts off first.  
  
  
  
_**full circle**_  
  
Kris makes it out alive through the night--no territorial rolling around, stray kicks, nothing. He wakes up a little too warm, Lu Han distinctively bony on top of him, but comfortable nonetheless. He stays unmoving for ages until the promise of a shower wins over the minor headache. The hot spray helps him feel like a person again. Lu Han slips into the thick bathroom air while Kris is inside, takes a leak, and turns on the faucet. His ‘good morning’ comes out garbled around his toothbrush. Kris watches Lu Han’s distorted image through the glass, recalling how he’d slept twined around him like a creeper plant around a tree.  
  
He ducks his head back down and rinses out the rest of the conditioner. The next time he looks up, Lu Han is taking off his underwear and sliding open the shower door.  
  
“Make some room, Godzilla.”  
  
Kris scoots closer to the wall. Then he reverses that step backwards and instead offers to wash Lu Han’s hair.   
  
Lu Han joined the blond ranks again recently. His hair is never going to fully recover from idol life, but when it's wet and lathered it glides easily through Kris' fingers. Kris massages the shampoo into Lu Han’s scalp, watching the warm suds run down Lu Han’s shoulders and back and the swell of his ass. The steam burns his skin an attractive pink.  
  
“Rinse,” Kris says, and Lu Han bends forward under the spray. When all the soap washes out, he slicks his hair back, plastered to his skull, and turns around. His bottom lip has been mauled red by his own teeth.  
  
“What about conditioner,” Kris starts to say. Lu Han boxes him against the glass door. He reaches down and wraps his palm around Kris’ half-hard dick.  
  
“I don’t care,” Lu Han says.  
  
“Okay,” Kris rasps.  
  
Lu Han tugs on Kris’ dick until it’s heavy and thick, the ruddy tip slipping through Lu Han’s fist, Kris fucking into it as much as Lu Han gives him the room to. Kris clasps Lu Han by the neck and pulls him in for a kiss. Lu Han’s tongue tastes like water and toothpaste against the roof of Kris’ mouth. The shower recedes into a white fog, but Lu Han, the rough rhythm of his hand, his hot mouth moving down Kris’ neck and chest, that’s all real. That stays.  
  
Lu Han scrapes his teeth over Kris’ nipple. “How do you wanna come?” he asks.   
  
Kris’ dick gives a heavy throb. “I--”  
  
“Anything goes,” Lu Han adds, and a shock of arousal twists through Kris’ gut.  
  
“Anything,” Kris repeats, and Lu Han grins this sweet, anxious grin.  
  
“But you have to make it worth my while, too.”  
  
Kris promises to himself, whoever else’s listening, that he’s going to make Lu Han come so hard he has nothing left. He knows what he wants in the core of his chest, the hot ache in his dick. He turns Lu Han around so Lu Han has to brace the shower wall, the flex of his back muscles making Kris’ head swim. He fits his mouth over the highest ridge of Lu Han’s spine and sucks. Lu Han chokes on an exhale, and Kris has to keep him there with a hand between his shoulderblades. With his other hand he slowly guides his cock down the cleft of Lu Han’s ass, rubbing it against his hole just to feel Lu Han shudder, and then he's pushing between Lu Han’s thighs.  
  
Right away Lu Han knows to squeeze his thighs together. The head of Kris’ cock nudges up behind Lu Han’s balls. Lu Han’s skin is slick with water, getting slicker each time Kris drive forward. The smooth friction makes Kris’ blood buzz. Then Lu Han crosses his ankles, clenching his thighs, creating a tighter, hotter space for Kris to fuck into, and Kris has to lean his forehead against Lu Han’s shoulder, shaky from the intensity, completely overwhelmed. He watches his cock disappear in and out between Lu Han’s legs. Listens to the wet obscene sound it makes, the way Lu Han whines at a hard thrust that sends Kris sliding up the underside of Lu Han’s dick.  
  
Lu Han’s hands slip against the tiles. Kris grabs one and pins it against the wall, giving himself the leverage to slam between Lu Han’s thighs. His hips have rubbed Lu Han’s ass raw. “When we get home we’ll do this properly,” Kris says into the nape of Lu Han’s neck, and Lu Han’s head drops forward with a gasping breath. “I’ll make it so good. I’ll fuck you the way you need.”  
  
Lu Han moans, and that’s all Kris needs to come, his cock pulsing between Lu Han’s thighs, shooting off against the base of Lu Han’s dick. Beneath him, Lu Han’s so hard he’s trembling.   
  
Kris drops unsteadily to his knees before he has the chance to catch his breath. Lukewarm water streams down his back. Lu Han is rigid with anticipation; Kris can see his dick jump, straining up towards his stomach. He ducks in and licks the inside of Lu Han’s thighs, drags his tongue through the come that hasn’t washed off yet, salty and warm. Lu Han shakes when Kris mouths at his balls, jerking forward as Kris sucks on the sensitive skin.  
  
“Where’re you going,” Kris mutters. He tugs Lu Han’s hips back. Lu Han’s legs spread further apart for him.   
  
“Are you gonna eat me out sometime this century?” Lu Han says hoarsely, and Kris chuckles and puts his tongue in Lu Han’s ass.  
  
He’s never done this before, and he knows he’s not great at it yet, but he doesn’t have to be. Lu Han’s too close to last, jacking himself off as he pushes back onto Kris’ face. Kris feels wild on the inside, chin covered in spit as he works his tongue into Lu Han’s body, using both thumbs to spread and hold him open. Wild, and victorious, as Lu Han comes with a wrung out sound like he’s been waiting for it for years, held up between Kris’ hands and the wall as the cool spray of the shower warms itself on his skin.   
  
  
  
_**lijiang→beijing**_  
  
36 hours straight, stopping occasionally for food, bathroom breaks, a three hour nap in a pay-by-the-hour roadside motel, and more 20-minute naps in dingy parking lots when both of them are too messed up to drive. “Ugh,” Kris says, waking up with a jolt when Lu Han slumps over in his sleep to bang his elbow into the horn. His head is going to explode.  
  
“Fuck me,” Lu Han groans. He squints at the neon convenience store logo glaring down at them like an answered prayer.   
  
Five minutes later Kris is popping open another canned doubleshot espresso to join the last three swimming his bloodstream. He starts the engine.  
  
“Good to go?”  
  
Lu Han, face-down across the backseat, makes a fist in response. Kris reaches back and pounds it.   
  
They cycle between being insanely tired and being so jacked up they can't stand to listen past the first minute of any song. When one of them drives, the other one tries to get some rest, but there’s a moment in wherever-the-fuck, Shaanxi, that Lu Han gets so bored he unbuckles his seatbelt and kisses Kris’ neck. Then they have to pull over. Kris turns off the headlights and maps out Lu Han’s body in the dark. He jerks them off together in his hand, Lu Han’s dick pushing alongside Kris’ own, slippery with spit and precome. Lu Han smacks into the car ceiling when he comes; he gets spunk on the upholstery. That break sets them back half an hour, so they don’t stop again until morning rolls around.  
  
Beijing is to their east, a lucky coincidence, Kris blinded by the sun glare. Instead of risking an accident, he pulls off at the next rest stop for some food. The smell of a warm breakfast lures Lu Han back into the land of the living. They eat sitting on the hood of the car, both of them pretty braindead, but combined they make one fully functional, contented person.   
  
Lu Han stretches his arms above his head until his joints pop. The bags under his eyes are darker than they were a week ago, but when he leans back his posture’s open, relaxed, freer. “Final stretch,” he yawns. “Want me to take over?”  
  
“Nah,” Kris says. Lu Han speeds even worse when he’s sleep-deprived. They have under ten hours left. Kris wants to take his time.   
  
His phone buzzes with a new photo from Chanyeol. By now the cast is covered in song lyrics and enormous tits, but the latest addition is in black Sharpie scrawl:  _hyung, come home soon!_  
  
Kris takes a picture for him of the burnt orange sky, lavender clouds. The sun already high enough to shine a beacon of light over Lu Han’s feet, draped off the car.  
  
_On our way_ , Kris types out, and sends.


	3. I was living in a devil town (chanyeol/baekhyun, chanyeol/tao)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> how to win friends and influence people in the zombie apocalypse. (zombie au)

The expressway is the main route in and out of Cheongju, transformed into a congested metal graveyard. Chanyeol cups both hands over his eyes, peering into a green van with water stains and a dented hood. There’s an empty infant seat in the back, a woman in the passenger side. He can’t tell what kind of dead she is until her head lolls against her shoulder. Then, catching onto his scent, she snaps her jaw at him through the spidery glass.  
  
Beside her, Baekhyun’s reflection is pulling the luggage out of someone else’s trunk. They’ve had a shitty time since their own car broke down a day ago. It’s only a little shittier than their plateau level over the past two months.  
  
“None of these are worth hotwiring,” Chanyeol complains. The sweat drips down his temples, irritating his eyes.  
  
“We couldn’t maneuver a car out of this clusterfuck anyway,” says Baekhyun, bent over an open suitcase. “They’re all on top of each other. Fuck, I’m too hungry for this.”  
  
He tosses over a modest first aid kit, which Chanyeol stuffs inside his camping bag. In his peripheral, lady in the car comes at him harder, her nails scratching against the window. The more she fights, the deeper her seatbelt cuts into her throat.  
  
“You want some new clothes?” Baekhyun adds. “Someone over here was close to your size.”  
  
Chanyeol’s t-shirt is soaked through, a symptom of mid-August. He feels like a giant walking sweat stain. “I was thinking about giving nudism a shot,” he says.  
  
“Nice. That’d make you really popular with the biters.”  
  
Baekhyun picks out a bundle of thin grey cotton from the suitcase and starts to change. Chanyeol watches the slow reveal of his skinny chest. A couple weeks ago it could’ve gotten him hot, the softness of Baekhyun’s skin, his taut pink nipples, but recently each individual rib just makes Chanyeol want to hit something.   
  
“You think?” he says, leaning back. “Cause, you know, I really wanna find myself a nice biter girlfriend.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Oh, yeah. A really pretty one.”  
  
The corner of Baekhyun’s mouth tugs up before his mop of dyed hair disappears through the shirt collar. Chanyeol grins too. Around them, the world is empty for miles in all four directions.   
  
They search the rest of the surrounding vehicles for whatever’s there: duct tape, sunblock, a stale energy bar that they split in half on the spot. Before they move on, Chanyeol tests the door to the green van. It’s unlocked. Lady snarls at him through the window, the inside of her mouth black and decayed, teeth protruding from her gums like jewels. Chanyeol lifted a combat knife off a dead soldier back in Seoul. He pins her hands with his forearm and digs the edge of the blade above the seatbelt, cutting her neck open the rest of the way. She gurgles, blood oozing. Chanyeol dips her head forward against her chest, her stringy black hair curtaining her face. A moment later, she’s silent.  
  
  
-  
  
  
Instead of food or weapons or anything of actual value, they stumble upon a damsel in distress on an overpass, armed with a crowbar, surrounded. “No,” Chanyeol says, and tries blindly to drag Baekhyun back in the direction they came, but Baekhyun’s already off, jumping the highway railing and making his way up the weedy, dried out hill.  
  
“No,” Chanyeol repeats, “oh come  _on_!”  
  
Chanyeol’s golden rule these days is  _take care of your own_. Baekhyun’s has skewed more towards  _save all the puppies and children._  He has an optimism that hasn’t burned out yet. If I can’t do that, he’d said to Chanyeol after Bucheon, if I can’t do  _something_ , what’s the fucking point? The week and a half they spent living day to day after the last shelters were overrun in Seoul hit Baekhyun the hardest. By the end Chanyeol knew he had to make up an endgame, some kind of goal beyond tooth and nail survival. “Ulsan,” he said. “I need to see if my parents--” made it, even though he already knew they hadn’t. He’d come to terms with it, had all the obligatory dreams, waking up haunted halfway through the night. Still, his sister’s status felt a little more hopeful. “I need to go home,” Chanyeol concluded.  
  
Baekhyun’s eyes cleared. The next day they rounded up supplies for their trip. At the convenience store, Baekhyun came across a rare pack of cigarettes, flattened and a third empty. He gifted the whole thing to Chanyeol, saying, “Cannibalization still beats lung cancer.”  
  
Take care of your own, Chanyeol tells himself, and goes running after Baekhyun like some suicidal asshole.  
  
Damsel’s just a kid, tall and dark, swinging the duty end of his crowbar through a biter’s open mouth. Smart enough to keep his back against a car. Chanyeol counts twelve total. His adrenaline kicks in exponentially after five. Mouth dry, heart pumping fast.  
  
“I’m lifting our gun ban for this,” Baekhyun says, boosting himself over the bridge’s concrete ledge as he retrieves his semiautomatic from the back of his jeans.  
  
“Sure, let’s use up our ammo. Let’s give him all our gear while we’re at it. Yo, kid, you want our medicine? Can we get you some snacks? Some, like, deodorant?”  
  
“You can’t afford to be giving away deodorant, babe,” Baekhyun says, takes aim, and pulls the trigger.  
  
Damsel’s gaze snaps over. So do the biters’--white eyed, gaping jawed, the skin flaking off their cheekbones. Gunfire always riles them up. Chanyeol doesn’t wait for them to start coming. He grips his knife in reverse and breaks from Baekhyun to advance down the overpass.  
  
The first biter to reach him receives a heavy boot to the gut. The force drives it backwards, and Chanyeol takes advantage and slips past its outstretched arms to stab through its left eye. Four rounds from Baekhyun drop two more, which buys Chanyeol the time to yank his knife free and take down another. They’ve done this enough times to function like two slotted gears, filling each other’s blind spots. Ahead of them, Damsel is struggling against a biter with a shock of dirty blond hair as it surges at him again and again. He shoves it back desperately with the length of his crowbar. None of the blows he lands are lethal. It’s so fucking amateur. Chanyeol hurries to finish off biter #6. Then he pulls his own gun out and shoots Blondie through the temple.  
  
Its head whips to the side in a misty red spray before its body crumples to the ground. Damsel is left standing, blood splattered against his face. He touches his fingertips to his cheek, stricken.  
  
“Don’t get any in your mouth,” Chanyeol calls to him. “Watch your left.”  
  
Damsel climbs back into himself in time to slam his crowbar into approaching #8’s face. Its nose shatters open on the curved metal end. Chanyeol flinches and hears--   
  
Baekhyun trapped against the overpass ledge with the last four biters closing in. He shoots down two in succession; then there’s the loud click of an empty magazine and his eyes go wide.   
  
The immediate, savage panic hits Chanyeol like a grenade. Before he even registers it he’s already running, knifing the first biter from behind through the throat just as Baekhyun slams the butt of his gun against the second one’s skull with a wet crack. It falls to the ground, where Baekhyun stands above it, sweaty and breathless, kicking its head in until the bone caves and leaks open like a can of thick paint. Its arm twitches, then stops.  
  
“Holy shit,” says Chanyeol, heart frantic in his chest. His empty stomach is catching up to him. For a moment he thinks he’s going to be sick. “Nice job.”  
  
“Thanks,” Baekhyun pants. Pinkish brain matter soaks the toe of his boot. They should’ve scavenged some shoes from that suitcase. “You alright?”  
  
Chanyeol makes a show of patting himself down for bites or scratches. “I’m clean.”   
  
“Good. Me too.”  
  
Baekhyun bends down to clean his gun off on a biter’s shirt. When he glances back up, his attention is no longer on Chanyeol. “What about you? Are you alright?”  
  
Chanyeol turns around. Damsel’s heading straight for them. His eyes are indescribably dark, and wet. Chanyeol gets out a, “Hey, you’re welcome--” just before Damsel reels back his fist and punches him in the face.  
  
  
-  
  
  
“I’m sorry for punching you in the face,” Huang Zitao says later. “I shouldn’t have done that.”  
  
Chanyeol winces as Baekhyun’s fingertips prod the tender flesh of his cheek, and says nothing, his gun still trained between Zitao’s eyes.  
  
“Don’t worry about it,” Baekhyun answers for him. “He has one of those faces.”  
  
“I’m really sorry,” Zitao says again. His Korean is intelligible but kind of bad.  
  
“No problem,” Chanyeol says. “It was nice meeting you. Now walk away.”  
  
Baekhyun pushes Chanyeol’s gun down. “Are you all by yourself?”  
  
Zitao isn’t crying anymore, at least. “Yes. I’m alone.”  
  
“Are you set up nearby?” Baekhyun asks. Zitao doesn’t respond. His gaze darts past Baekhyun’s shoulders. Baekhyun touches his upper arm briefly, guiding him back. “It’s okay. Look at me. I just want to know if you have somewhere you can go.”  
  
Zitao’s throat bobs unsteadily, but he lifts his chin. “There’s a folk town up the mountain. It was empty when we found it, but it’s safe.”  
  
“You said you were alone,” Chanyeol says. “Who’s we?”  
  
“Me and my friend,” Zitao says, and swipes his arm across his eyes roughly. “We came down for supplies. Got attacked.”  
  
Chanyeol follows Zitao’s line of sight back to the car, a few meters away, and the body beside it. When he gets closer, he finally notices the pallid but recognizably flesh-colored skin. The disease hadn’t fully set in. Behind him, he hears Baekhyun say, “Oh, fuck.” Chanyeol nudges Blondie onto his back with his boot to get a good look. He finds the fresh bite on his left shoulder, the shirt torn through where teeth sunk in and ripped out a chunk. Blood has puddled from the bullet wound in the side of his head, but his face is in tact. It’s not a bad-looking face: strong eyebrows, a steep jaw. Chanyeol crouches down to search through his clothes. There’s a trendy, beat-up leather wallet with some sentimental leftovers, Chinese bills, a Pusan student ID card that identifies him as Kris Wu. Chanyeol runs his thumb over the plastic edge as he examines the picture. Yeah. Attractive guy. What a waste.  
  
Zitao comes to stand next to him, his long shadow blocking the light. Chanyeol holds the wallet up. “Do you want this?”  
  
Zitao takes it wordlessly. He saves the ID, slipping it in the back of his jeans, then recovers a heavy silver ring from one of the wallet pockets. The expression on his face when he slides the metal down onto his left thumb makes some shard of Chanyeol ache like a rotten tooth.  
  
Chanyeol wipes his palms on his jeans, climbs to his feet and says to Baekhyun, “The sun’s going down soon. We need to get moving.”  
  
Baekhyun’s in the middle of loading a new magazine into his semi. “I know. What about Zitao?”  
  
So they’re all on a first name basis now? Chanyeol opens his mouth to argue but Zitao beats him to it.  
  
“Do you need somewhere to sleep?”  
  
“That’s our business, not yours--”  
  
“Yeah,” Baekhyun talks over him, “actually, we do. Just for a day.”  
  
“I can show you,” Zitao says. He meets Chanyeol’s eyes for the first time since he punched him. Chanyeol’s jaw throbs, as if in direct response. “I owe you for the help.”  
  
Chanyeol is acutely aware of the blood on Zitao’s face, who it belongs to, who put it there. He isn’t about to apologize for it. Still, Zitao’s giving them their best option right now, so he does say, “Thanks. Sorry to intrude.”  
  
Bodies left out overnight tend to get eaten, and that’s a shitty way to honor your dead. Together, they stuff Kris Wu into the trunk of Zitao’s car. “We can help you bury him too,” Baekhyun offers.   
  
“I want to do it by myself.” Zitao twists the new ring around his thumb. “I should be the one to put him to rest.”  
  
Chanyeol opens the passenger side door but the seat is drenched in browning blood. Kris must have sat there, deliriously pressing a hand to his mangled shoulder as if that could stem the bleeding as Zitao tried to drive them to safety. Chanyeol’s palms turn clammy as he looks. A dull ringing fills his head. He slams the door, hard.  
  
“It doesn’t make any difference,” he says, tossing his camping bag into the backseat. “Dead is dead.”  
  
  
-  
  
  
On May 19th, a father looked after his seven-year-old daughter at Seoul National University Hospital. She lay with an IV in her arm, her skin sallow under her hospital gown. The car accident six hours ago had left her needing two liters of AB negative. They’d found a match for the transfusion, but no one anticipated her bad reaction to the blood. Her temperature was up. The fever came with chills, an unexplained rash, ragged difficult breathing. The other driver had been drinking and never made it out of the crash. Good, the father thought, but his own viciousness disturbed him, so he sat by the bed and prayed. On the vitals monitor, his daughter’s heart slowed to a near stop. Ten minutes later, she opened her eyes. “Daddy,” she said, and stretched her jaw open.  
  
By June, Chanyeol’s dad was calling him once a day, asking if he wanted to come home. Don’t watch too much of the evening news, Chanyeol told him. You know it only gets you worked up. It was impossible to get out of Seoul anyway. The city was under strict quarantine. Classes were being cancelled long before the soldiers moved in. I’m never gonna graduate, Chanyeol thought, slightly hysterical. Jongdae was still working on his composition final up until they were all rounded up into government refuges, waiting for evacuation from the largest city on a tiny peninsula of a country.   
  
In July, which should’ve been the start of their summer break, Bucheon went up in flames. They watched it burn from their department store turned shelter, high and shimmering in the sky. Baekhyun’s hometown. For two days he wouldn’t move from his cot. Power was down, phones and radio were down, but at least the quarantine was down too. “I’m going to make a pharmacy trip tomorrow,” Kyungsoo said as he marked another tally onto the wall, keeping track of the days. “Maybe I can find some more toilet paper.”  
  
“Sounds good,” Chanyeol said, watching over Baekhyun’s sleeping back. “I’ll be your wingman.”  
  
Kyungsoo cracked a smile. “Cause that always ends well.”  
  
On the other end of the country, Zitao and Kris were running too. The blood had traveled to Busan later than most, but once it got there, the city turned almost overnight. The two of them drove west in Kris’ angel-faced housemate’s car. “This thing was his baby,” Kris muttered when they pulled over an hour later in the middle of the countryside. “No food or drink allowed ever. Can you believe that?”  
  
Zitao fumbled open the car door. He needed air. Outside, he slumped back on the smooth hood, pinched the inside of his arm ruthlessly, and held it, closing his eyes. He told himself he’d open them again on ten, but waited an extra twenty. The skin of his arm stung, blossoming dark pink. When he turned around he could see Kris gently detaching Lu Han’s jade pendant charm from the rearview mirror and slipping it into the glovebox. So he kept his tears to himself and his thoughts on the people who still needed him to be strong, his family back on the mainland, Kris. He finished another ten count, and this time got back in the car.  
  
  
-  
  
  
Zitao brings them to the deserted hanok village, a walled neighborhood of traditional houses with a natural flowing stream. They drive past the remains of a bonfire, blackened bodies charred together, the smell recent enough to make Chanyeol’s stomach turn. Zitao maneuvers the car into one of the less ravaged courtyards. There’s food, he tells them as they unload Kris’ body. Water from the stream can be filtered and boiled. When he and Kris first arrived over a week ago, they cleared out the remaining sick. Since then, only a couple have come this far up the mountain.  
  
“Wait,” Baekhyun interrupts. “What do you call them?”  
  
“The sick,” Zitao says. “Why? What do you?”  
  
Chanyeol catches Baekhyun’s hesitation, so he says it for him. “Biters.”  
  
Zitao stares, then goes to find a shovel.  
  
Two hours and a real meal later, Baekhyun passes out for good, curled up on the floor in some of Kris’ oversized clothes, his newly washed hair drying in the breeze. For a while Chanyeol looks after him, exhausted, unable to fall asleep himself.  
  
Out in the courtyard, Zitao is almost done digging. Chanyeol slides the door closed behind himself but keeps it ajar. He lounges shirtless on the wooden porch as his skin drinks in the brisk air. It’s less muggy at this altitude, and so calm that it sets his body on edge like a stray animal scratching at the door. The only light source is the oil lamp placed by the foot of the grave. It casts an orange glow upon Zitao’s face, deepening the shadow of his nose, setting his hair and eyes on fire. There’s no question that Chanyeol is trespassing, but the scene twists a barbed, voyeuristic thorn inside of him.  
  
Zitao speaks up first. “How come you call them biters?”  
  
“Why do you think?” Chanyeol says.  
  
“It’s dehumanizing,” Zitao says. He’s breathing a little hard from exertion.  
  
“Newsflash,” Chanyeol says, “they’re not human.”  
  
“They were, though.”  
  
Christ, this is some idealist bullshit. “Is he your first?” Chanyeol asks as Zitao stoops down to lift Kris into his arms. Without support, Kris’ head drops back against Zitao’s shoulder, a fucked up Pietà.   
  
“What does that mean?”  
  
“Is he the first one you’ve lost?”  
  
Zitao slowly lowers Kris into the ground. “I had other friends in Busan.”  
  
Except there are people you lose without losing sleep and there are people that follow you around during the day so that a glimpse of their face exists in all the new faces you encounter. For weeks every biter has huge eyes and a full cupid’s bow. Chanyeol drops the subject. Kris’ grave is too deep not to be Zitao’s first anyway. People want to be able to assign a physical approximation to closure. After that, out of necessity, the mourning process accelerates. The holes grow incrementally more shallow until they aren’t being dug at all.  
  
Zitao sits on his knees next to Kris, angled so that only his profile is visible. Chanyeol has a flashback to the exposed tear tracks on Zitao’s cheeks from earlier, drying through blood and dirt. It’d been the kind of grieving that had felt so open it was antiquated. As if Chanyeol was watching something that didn’t belong in this world anymore. Something that was worthless.  
  
After some time, Zitao stands and takes up the shovel again.   
  
The sound of a grave being filled has a ritualistic rhythm to it. It’s funny, that that’s what helps Chanyeol doze off. Eyes closed, shoulder tucked against one of the wooden pillars, he listens for the blade sinking back into upturned ground. The soft rain of dirt cloaking the body.  
  
  
-  
  
  
“Hey buttercup.”  
  
Chanyeol has a serious kink in his neck. He peeks his eyes open. “Morning,” he says roughly.  
  
“Were you out here all night?” Baekhyun asks, frowning. “Without a shirt?”  
  
“Yeah, it’s--” Chanyeol sneezes, “I’m fine.”  
  
Baekhyun sits cross-legged next to him on the porch. Chanyeol stretches both arms above his head, waking his muscles up, then slings one around Baekhyun’s shoulders on its way down. The courtyard is empty, silent except for a couple birds. “Where’s the kid?”  
  
“Zitao,” Baekhyun corrects. “He told me he was going for a run.”  
  
There’s a long patch of fresh earth in the center of the courtyard. Zitao didn’t make a marker, but a branch of hackberries and small flowers from the nearby tree has been left at the head of the grave. For the first time Chanyeol’s conscious of how chilly it is. Somewhere in him is a busted leak that lets all the warmth drip out. He hooks Baekhyun closer and noses at his hair until the sensation passes.   
  
  
-  
  
  
He and Baekhyun stay for a second day, followed by a third. The swelling in Chanyeol’s jaw recedes. If they’re overstaying their welcome, Zitao gives no indication. He keeps to himself mostly, but sometimes asks about the situation in Seoul, or shows them how to add bodies to the bonfire. Kris’ old job, he says.  
  
“I have no clue how he made it this far,” Chanyeol says on day four as they sweep the village perimeter.  
  
“He’s pretty tough, actually,” says Baekhyun, who goes out of his way to talk to Zitao. “Just kind of young.”  
  
Not just young. There was something about Zitao that gave off a rocky tenderness, heart so fresh and raw Chanyeol could smell it. “He should get out of here and keep moving,” he says. “We should, too.”  
  
They deal with the handful of biters caught by Zitao’s booby traps, then head back to the main hanok. Baekhyun deliberately takes the longest route, up narrow roads bordered by red clay roofs. They pass pockets of shrubs and flowering trees that are greener than anything Chanyeol’s seen in months. The village is a nice set-up. Most of the houses were ransacked during the initial exodus of tenants and tourists fleeing into the city proper for army protection, but some broken doors and busted furniture are easy to accept in exchange for stone walls and a water source. He and Baekhyun loot one of the houses along the way for any leftover supplies, but they at least take their shoes off before entering. Even when Chanyeol doesn’t see the stream, he can hear the constant flow of water nearby. It makes him feel like he’s swimming around in a giant fish tank with glass on all sides. All around him, this unnatural, fake habitat.  
  
Inside the house, Baekhyun grabs Chanyeol’s wrist and lifts himself up onto his toes to kiss him. Muscle memory switches on. Chanyeol strokes his thumb down the nape of Baekhyun’s neck and bends down, biting Baekhyun’s bottom lip the way he knows he likes. Sunlight climbs through the torn paper windows that style the doors, bathing half of Chanyeol’s face and leaving the other half cool.   
  
He pulls back first. “You in the mood to...”  
  
Baekhyun huffs a laugh. “Fool around? No thanks.”  
  
“Bummer.” Chanyeol grins, crooked. “So what was that for?”  
  
Baekhyun plays it off casually: “What do you think about coming back here after Ulsan?”  
  
The truth is that Baekhyun looks good here. Better than he has in a while. The other day he tried to recreate banana milk using water, powdered coffee creamer, and melted banana flavored Lotte candy. Zitao tasted it with a look of grossed-out curiosity, which was the first honest clue that he was going to be okay. Their damp clothes and scrubbed boots had been laid out across the porch to dry. Part of Chanyeol thought,  _Okay_. The other part, like an abused dog, instantly sunk back. Already too wild and mistrustful for halcyon days.  
  
He pushes his fingers through Baekhyun’s hair. “None of this is real,” he says. “We can’t trick ourselves into letting our guard down just so we can keep playing house.”  
  
“Yeah,” Baekhyun says eventually. He steps back. “You’re right.”  
  
Day five, they let Zitao know that they’re leaving. “Chanyeol’s family lives in Ulsan,” Baekhyun explains as he packs up his gear.  
  
“Okay,” says Zitao reluctantly. “I understand.”  
  
Then Baekhyun asks, “Do you want to come?”  
  
Chanyeol stops trying to forcibly fold his space blanket into a smaller square. “What?”  
  
“What ‘what’?”  
  
“It’s been just me and you since the beginning.”  
  
Baekhyun levels him with a stubborn look. “I don’t think anyone should be alone,” he says. “You said yesterday that Zitao should leave too. Having an extra body around will be good for us.”  
  
Chanyeol’s jaw clenches, but he turns to Zitao, who has started to back up, spooked. “Do you want to come with us?”  
  
“I don’t need charity,” Zitao starts.  
  
“It’s not,” says Baekhyun. “It’s really easy: do you wanna come?”  
  
Chanyeol chokes his blanket back into his camping bag, and hears Zitao respond, “Yes.”  
  
  
-  
  
  
Before they go, Zitao replaces the hackberry branch with a new offering. Of the hundred hours since they’ve met, he has slept less than twenty. He went on a lot of jogs, did a lot of push-ups. He caught fish for dinner one evening, Chanyeol couldn’t tell you how or from where. Baekhyun hadn’t been wrong: Zitao is tough enough. He’s powered by his own private kind of resilience. But then when Baekhyun accidentally burned one of the fish over a small fire, Zitao scooted closer willingly and said that he could share, and Chanyeol saw it coming from miles away: Zitao, untethered, attaching his love to anyone who’d take it.  
  
  
-  
  
  
Cheongju to Ulsan is a three hour drive. Chanyeol calls shotgun despite the bloodstain because there’s no way he’s spending the whole time in the backseat with Zitao.  
  
For the first twenty minutes of the ride he puts his feet on the dashboard and zones out. Zitao remains visible in the side mirror, gazing out the window at the hilly roadside. He’s bobbing along to whatever song is playing, mouthing the words--  
  
Chanyeol twists abruptly in his seat. “How the hell do you still have a working iPod?”  
  
Road trips are impossible without tunes. Back when he and Baekhyun had been speeding out of Seoul, they’d taken it upon themselves to sing girl group songs at the top of their lungs. It was inevitably easier to yell  _Loving you, what should I do?_  than to go anywhere near the stuff running around in their heads. The car swerves as Baekhyun jerks around too.  
  
“You’re shitting me!”   
  
Zitao takes out one of his earbuds. “I only let myself listen to one song a day. It’s going to die any minute, though.”  
  
“I’d kill someone for my iPod back,” Baekhyun sighs. “I’d definitely kill Chanyeol.”  
  
So Zitao yanks out his headphone jack. The song sounds a little distorted through the built-in speaker, but the beat is wicked and familiar.  
  
“You like Huck P?” Chanyeol asks.  
  
“Yeah, he’s good.” Zitao turns up the volume. “He was good. Do you think he’s still alive?”  
  
Chanyeol makes a pathetic face. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”  
  
Once the song ends, Zitao plays a Beenzino track next, eager now that he knows what type of music Chanyeol enjoys. Baekhyun knows the album too, from when it dropped last year and Chanyeol looped it nonstop at max volume until Jongdae threatened to throw his laptop off the roof. Chanyeol doesn’t want to have to open that memory to Zitao, to fold him into the association, but evidently Zitao owns the last charged iPod on the planet, and he’s taking requests. The three of them get another fifteen minutes, Baekhyun trying to simultaneously drive and dance to Genie (“I hope they’re still alive,” he says wistfully), before the battery life finally runs out.  
  
  
-  
  
  
“Can we pull over?” Zitao asks around the halfway mark. “I gotta take a leak.”  
  
“Squeeze your thighs together,” Chanyeol says.  
  
Zitao bares his teeth at him in the rearview mirror.  
  
Baekhyun snickers and pulls over.  
  
As Zitao jumps out of the car, Chanyeol digs into his jeans and finds the old pack of cigarettes he’s been carrying around. He sticks one in his mouth and waves the rest at Baekhyun, who wrinkles his nose. Out of friendship, Chanyeol rolls the window down before he lights up. The weather’s alright today, not so hot. He props an elbow against the windowsill and leans outside, the afternoon sun sweeping over the part of his face that isn’t shaded by his hoodie.  
  
The headrush hits him right away. He closes his eyes to savor it, the buzz, the tingle in his hands and brain. He’s never been a big smoker, but it’s going to blow when his pack runs out.  
  
Zitao stands a couple meters away in the tall grass, his back not fully turned. His shirt clings to his shoulder blades. When he tucks himself back into his underwear, Chanyeol catches a glimpse of his cock. Soft, uncut, framed by dark and untidy pubic hair. It’s only a brief look. A tease. Not enough to tell the size of it. Chanyeol brings the cigarette back to his lips and tears his eyes away.  
  
Zitao takes his time returning to the car, casting Chanyeol an interested glance. After some deliberation, Chanyeol reaches through the window and offers him a smoke.  
  
Zitao is delicate even in the way he holds a cigarette, loose between his index and middle fingers, eyes hooded as he watches Chanyeol light it for him. He takes a monster of a hit. Chanyeol’s mouth waters just watching him. The smoke leaks endlessly out of Zitao’s lungs as he rolls his neck in a circle and exhales.  
  
“Fuck it,” Baekhyun says. “Let me bum one too.”  
  
Chanyeol grins over his shoulder. “I thought you didn’t wanna taste like cancer when you finally get cannibalized.”  
  
Baekhyun socks him in the arm. “You probably taste like asshole.”  
  
Chanyeol counts the six cigarettes he has left, a neat row of white filters, but what the fuck is he saving them for? It’s nice out. He lights another and takes a deep drag on it before passing to Baekhyun. Through the open window, he watches Zitao tilt his head back, momentarily calm. The length of his neck like a fish hook. His mouth is open, round, cheeks hollowed and smooth as he blows perfectly shaped smoke rings at the blue sky.  
  
  
-  
  
  
Chanyeol takes over the last stretch of driving so Baekhyun can sneak a nap in the backseat. By now they’re running on a low tank, so he pulls off the highway around Daegu in search of some gas.  
  
They luck out, coming across an abandoned red Hyundai that’s been run off the shoulder of the road, its front bumper completely destroyed. A dry crust of blood and hair stains the windshield. Chanyeol circles the wreckage and finds the crushed torso still pinned against the guardrail.  
  
He glances at Zitao, who looks a little squeamish. “You can go sit in the car.”  
  
Zitao shakes his head. “I’ll stay with you.”  
  
Chanyeol shrugs, uses Zitao’s crowbar to pop open the fuel door, and gets to work. He keeps half his attention on siphoning the gas, half on Zitao, who watches from over his shoulder and wants to learn so he asks a lot of questions. It’s easy to notice the exact second Zitao tenses up and goes quiet.  
  
Two biters have emerged further up the road. But they’re slow moving, dragging their feet, which means he and Zitao haven’t yet been discovered. “Go take care of it,” Chanyeol says, passing Zitao the crowbar.  
  
Zitao hefts the weight of the metal in his hands. “Right now?”  
  
“Scared?”  
  
“No,” Zitao defends. “But they haven’t done anything yet.”  
  
Chanyeol feels the rash all the way down in his bone marrow, like he’s just fucking allergic to this guy sometimes. “So you’re saying we should wait for them to try to eat us first,” he says. “Or let them go so they can eat someone else.”  
  
When Zitao doesn’t budge, Chanyeol grabs the crowbar back from him and adds, “The hard part’s done. Pull the hose out and fill up our tank.”  
  
Zitao glares at Chanyeol as he takes over the siphon. “Where are you going?”  
  
“To do your job for you,” Chanyeol sneers.  
  
It should take all of five minutes. They smell him approaching from a couple meters away, but by then he’s ready. He mutters, “C’mere, beautiful,” to the first one and cracks its skull apart with a hard swing.  
  
But its friend is quicker, less deteriorated, and at first it gets the jump on him, hands grasping his sleeve. With a wheezed groan, it brings its face in close, mouth opened wide. Chanyeol’s fight or flight response goes insane. He wrenches free wildly and dodges behind. The curved metal of his crowbar tears a meaty strip off the biter’s back. When the biter’s legs give out, Chanyeol drives the crowbar as far as it’ll go through the back of its head. Black sludge bleeds from the puncture site, ruining the rest of the biter’s grimy, bleached light hair.  
  
Chanyeol drops the crowbar and rips his hoodie off, struggling for air. He scrubs his hand down his face but as soon as he opens his eyes again the pair of biters at his feet make him violently dizzy. Suddenly it’s like he’s outside of himself, looking at two different bodies, feeling someone else’s throat close up. His vision skews, goes blurry. Everything inside his chest on the threshold of exploding.  
  
He crouches with his head down, links both sets of fingers behind his neck, and waits it out.

 

-

 

Seoul spent weeks cultivating the blood in its hospitals, ripping itself apart. By the time the sickness made it to the east coast, it’d become more aggressive, and fast. Ulsan didn’t have time to fester. There’s a brutality that hangs like a noose between the shadows of empty buildings.   
  
They ditch the car where the street’s been obstructed by a blockade of scrap metal. Chanyeol takes the lead, guiding Baekhyun and Zitao through neighborhoods littered with cardboard, broken glass, rats crawling from one hole to the next, the occasional silent cat. His nerves are so trigger happy that the sound of crows overhead makes him seize up. There’s no one in the streets. The front gate to the apartment complex is unlocked, and the security station window has been smashed open. Chanyeol used to know the guard: around his mom’s age, with an eternal hair bun, limp in her left leg, a knack for nicknames. “Show me a smile, Teeth Rich,” she said when Chanyeol biked back through the gate from school, and clutched her heart at the sight of Chanyeol’s cheesy grin.  
  
Chanyeol feels Baekhyun’s hand on the small of his back. He realizes he’s stopped walking.   
  
“You need a minute?” Baekhyun asks.  
  
Chanyeol jerks his head no, then calls back, “Stay close, Tao.”  
  
Zitao, who’d stopped in front of the gate where MERCY is spray-painted in black, catches up again. Meanwhile Chanyeol steels himself as he runs over to the security station. Large flies buzz near his face. He keeps his eyes fixed on the master set of keys hanging from the blood-stained wall, looks nowhere else, and reaches through the broken window.   
  
It’s raining by the time they arrive at his building. August is Ulsan’s wet season. Without electricity, the door code doesn’t work, so Chanyeol tests every slippery brass key. The lock opens on the tenth try. Baekhyun bumps his fist against Chanyeol’s as he heads inside first. Zitao lingers in the doorway. He glances back at Chanyeol through his bangs, matted to his forehead from the rain, his eyebrows knitted together, and opens his mouth.   
  
“We’re cool,” Chanyeol cuts him off. Basic teamwork will always take top priority. “Sorry if I was being a dick.”  
  
“You were being a dick,” Zitao says, slowly. “But I just wanted to ask if you’re okay.”  
  
Chanyeol hadn’t returned to the car until the vertigo ended. He kept his hoodie off and used it to mop the sweat off his face, the blood off the crowbar. Zitao was leaning against the car door, guarded, and Chanyeol was spoiling for another fight, but it didn’t happen. Instead Zitao tossed one of their steel water bottles in his direction. It wasn’t until Chanyeol glimpsed his own face in the driver seat window that he saw what Zitao did. Someone filthy, and exhausted, and vulnerable.   
  
Zitao doesn’t wait around for a response. Chanyeol watches him climb up the stairwell until he disappears, and follows last, the door banging shut after him.  
  
  
-  
  
  
Whatever the city is like outside, the apartment is how Chanyeol remembers it. They’re on the third floor. Three beds, two baths. Faint discoloration on the living room walls because when Chanyeol was four years old he drew on everything, and Yura, a mature seven, knowing the value of future blackmail, scrubbed the pen marks out of the plaster before their parents came home. The fruit bowl on the kitchen table is filled with moldy oranges, emitting an acridly sweet, rotten odor.  
  
“Dad?” Chanyeol calls into the hallway before he can stop himself.  
  
All he hears is Baekhyun and Zitao behind him, sliding the balcony open to throw out the fruit and let in the fresh air.  
  
Chanyeol keeps his gun out and checks his parents’ room first. The bed is unmade. Clothes spill onto the floor from between the wardrobe doors, and the flowers in the skinny vase by the vanity mirror are long dead. The framed wedding portrait is missing. It’s not as bad as Chanyeol imagined. His father’s hardback books remain stacked on the windowsill, left behind.  
  
Yura’s room is undisturbed. She hasn’t been back. Chanyeol was prepared for that truth, too. After she landed her dream broadcasting gig, she found her own place a hundred miles away, surrounded by friends. Every so often their mother would come in and dust the furniture, smooth the sheets, sit on the bed for a while, wearing her nostalgia like a perfume.   
  
The last room is his own. He drops into his chair, below the posters that hang above his desk. He messes around with some of the junk he has lying around, textbooks, CDs, his first guitar. He tells himself he is no more or less alone than he was ten minutes ago.   
  
That’s how Baekhyun discovers him later, numbly plucking out a song. Baekhyun shuts the door behind himself. Chanyeol doesn’t look up until Baekhyun is sitting in front of him on the wooden surface of the desk, opening his knees to case Chanyeol between them. He lets Baekhyun pull him forward until his face is hidden against Baekhyun’s chest. Quietly, his hands come up to hold onto Baekhyun’s damp shirt, the smell of rain enveloping him.   
  
  
-  
  
  
They make themselves at home inside the master bedroom. Zitao tapes kitchen rags over the windows to trap the candlelight inside. Baekhyun is out on the balcony, brushing his teeth with a cup of rainwater. “Are you sure you want us to stay in here?” he’d asked earlier as they unloaded their bags.  
  
“It’s safer if we’re all in the same room,” Chanyeol’d said. “This one has the best bed.”  
  
Truth is, the thought of sleeping in his old room by himself makes him want to puke. He strips the mattress bare, piling the old linens back into the wardrobe, and replaces them with new ones that smell like a cocktail of detergent and dust. When that’s done, he undoes his belt on autopilot, and peels off his wet clothes until he’s down to his underwear.  
  
“What’s your preference?” he asks Zitao.  
  
Zitao startles. “What?”   
  
Chanyeol hands Zitao a stack of extra clothes. “Put these on. I meant which side of the bed do you want?”  
  
Zitao licks his lips. “Uh, I don’t care.”  
  
He takes off his tee in exchange for a dry one, black with  _Rock The Volume_  printed across the front. It fits awkwardly at best. Chanyeol’s taller than Zitao now, but back in high school he’d still been in the process of shooting up like a weed, consuming the fridge whole as all the baby fat finally fell off, and he didn’t have anything like Zitao’s muscle definition.   
  
Chanyeol climbs under the covers as Zitao finishes up with the windows. “If you don’t care, I’m taking the left. Give Baekhyun the middle; he’s a cuddler.”  
  
“Me too,” Zitao says. It surprises half a grin out of Chanyeol.  
  
“Don’t try anything weird,” he says.  
  
“Don’t project weird stuff onto other people,” Zitao says. He tacks on, as if extending a warm hand: “Goodnight.”  
  
Chanyeol presses himself further into the mattress. He’d forgotten how good a real bed feels. For a moment it wells up inside him, big and poisonous, flowing into every part of himself: a total, consuming, ferocious feeling of homesickness. Then he sleeps.   
  
  
-  
  
  
Chanyeol hasn’t been able to retain his dreams since July. His heart pounds like a motherfucker when he wakes up, his skin is drenched in sweat, but the most he ever keeps are flashes of teeth, neck, eyes, vein. Sometimes he recalls, latently, before the images fade, that he gets everyone killed. Sometimes he does the killing himself.  
  
Baekhyun is tucked against his arm. Chanyeol pushes him away as gently as he can when every inch of his body is screaming with a shapeless fear. A candle flickers by the bed. He follows the radius of dying light to the window where Zitao is curled up on the floor with his knees against his chest.  
  
“Are you up?” he asks, hoarse.  
  
Zitao rouses, lifting his forehead off his folded arms. “A sound outside woke me.”  
  
Chanyeol sits up against the wall, rubs his eyes clear, and regroups: these are his teeth. This is his neck. “I don’t hear anything.”  
  
Zitao shrugs and puts his head back down.  
  
A moment later it starts again: a high whimper that carries from the ground below. Intervals of distressed snuffling, the scrabble of an injured leg.  
  
“I think it’s a dog,” says Zitao.  
  
“Fuck,” Chanyeol mutters.  
  
It goes on for another minute. They listen in silence, Zitao refusing to look up, even if they can't see it happen. Chanyeol cracks his knuckles over and over in the dark.   
  
Soon the dog attracts company: down the street, the labored drag of a pair of sneakers against the asphalt. The whining rises in pitch, joined by a distantly starved moan. Zitao’s shoulders hunch up.   
  
“Ignore it,” Chanyeol says. “Let’s talk. Where are you from?”  
  
Zitao shoves his hair back from his face, rattled, then drops his hand. He angles his body away from the window, towards the bed and Chanyeol. “Do you know Qingdao?”  
  
“Yeah. One of the coastal cities, right?”  
  
Incheon ran ferry services, some of them to Chinese harbors. Chanyeol and the gang had explored the possibility of island-hopping after graduation, finally getting around to visiting Jeju. Zitao goes on about the beaches, the perfect weather. Mountains on one side and the ocean on the other. Each year he’d ingest his body mass equivalent in saltwater, swimming with friends. Qingdao was crowded during the summer months, but there were some gold stretches of sand, local secrets, where he used to walk until the sun went down and the wind picked up. The air pollution was less apocalyptic than Beijing’s, so every so often there were stars.   
  
He hasn’t been back for a long time. It was hard to find the opportunity, not to mention the money. Zitao’s last birthday had come two weeks before the epidemic. He spent the majority of it with Kris, who took him out despite his moodiness and plied him with pricey seafood and alcohol. The next morning he woke up on Kris’ couch, Kris’ steadily rising chest, as Lu Han brewed an extra pot of coffee for them before he left for work, greeting, “Rise and shine, assholes.” Zitao groaned, hungover as hell. Still, he felt happy.  
  
During that last week, the city of Busan published a full roster of missing persons. Lu Han’s car keys went undisturbed for three days hanging by the front door, until Kris grabbed them in one hand, and Zitao’s wrist in the other.  
  
“We talked about finding our way back to the mainland,” Zitao says. “I wanted to try earlier, but he thought we weren’t ready yet.”  
  
Airwaves died out before anyone could learn much about the global spread, but naivety doesn’t pay. Chanyeol wonders if Kris secretly knew: there was nothing for them in Qingdao.  
  
“He sounds like a good guy.”  
  
“He was. But he made the wrong call,” Zitao says. “We should’ve tried.”  
  
“You could be dead right now.”  
  
“It’s not always about dying or living,” Zitao tells him.  
  
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Chanyeol says.  
  
“I mean it,” Zitao says, hotly.   
  
Chanyeol leans back and lets his skull hit the wall, thinking,  _Whatever_ , and again, harder,  _Whatever_. The dog outside has gone quiet. In its place, he hears the rip of tendon from bone. Wet, ravenous chewing. He finds Baekhyun’s wrist under the blanket and rubs his thumb up the pumping artery. Baekhyun shifts closer in his sleep.   
  
“What about you?” Zitao breaks through the tension. “We’re traveling together now. We should get to know each other.”  
  
“No thanks,” Chanyeol says. “I’m all set.”  
  
“You were having a nightmare,” Zitao interrupts, which makes Chanyeol’s mouth snap shut. “I heard you. If we were sleeping out in the open, anyone else could’ve heard too--”  
  
“Drop it,” Chanyeol says. He tries to fight off the memory, which has been recycled so many times that it’s deteriorated now, an old rotting house you visit, standing only by the impossible strength of your anger, your own culpability. He looks at Zitao looking at him like he gets it, like he understands shit about it, and the worst part is Chanyeol is so tired that he doesn’t turn away. Zitao doesn’t deserve to hear this, but something inside Chanyeol, the thing that panics, that dreams, is locked in a room saying,  _Enough_.  
  
  
-  
  
  
Kyungsoo died. Kyungsoo came back. Blood was always a cartoonish red in Chanyeol’s imagination but in real life it turned out to be darker, thicker; the smell was strong enough to taste and impossible to clean out from under his fingernails. We need to put him down, Baekhyun said, like Kyungsoo was some kind of animal, but for the first few hours he still knew how to say Chanyeol’s name.  
  
It didn’t count as real lucidity. Kyungsoo was as rabid as the rest; whether or not he remembered Chanyeol, he definitely smelled him, the stink of live meat. When he lunged for Chanyeol, the metal cuffs bit into his wrists. He shrunk back, his big milky eyes darting around, and then lunged again. Chanyeol stood at the opposite end of the fenced alleyway, his hands balled into fists, listening.  _Chan-nyeol._  He heard it in Kyungsoo’s smooth voice, preparing for his junior recital. Bulky headphones slipping over his ears as he hummed along to his opera workshop arias. All the Supreme Team covers they recorded together, punch-drunk from sleep deprivation at three in the morning, and Chanyeol grabbed Kyungsoo’s face, both cheeks, and Kyungsoo couldn’t stop laughing, You’re a freak, quit it, Chanyeol, let me go.  
  
He left Kyungsoo out there for three days to live off alley rats. “Who’s treating him like an animal now,” Baekhyun hissed. They could sometimes hear him feeding from where they slept inside.   
  
“If you can’t do it, then let someone else,” Jongdae said as Baekhyun pushed past them.  
  
“No one goes near him but me,” Chanyeol spat out. He’d been the one who lost track of Kyungsoo as they raided the pharmacy, he’d been the one to handcuff Kyungsoo to the drainpipe and stay with him as the blood took over, and he had to be the one to see this through.   
  
“This is not about you or your screwed up idea of loyalty,” Jongdae said.   
  
“How should I do it? Do I shoot him? Do I use the tire iron? Enlighten me, if it’s so fucking easy for you, I really wanna know--”  
  
“Don’t be an asshole,” Jongdae said furiously. “I know it’s hard. But this can’t be how we take care of our own.”  
  
That night, Jongdae shined his flashlight on the drainpipe. Both cuffs were empty, slicked with blood and skin that had scraped off Kyungsoo’s hands. He flexed his fingers around his pistol grip, swallowing. Summer humidity itched the back of his neck like a premonition. In the murky darkness, he heard a low, raspy breath.  
  
“Sorry,” he gasped when Chanyeol found him. He was bleeding out of his arm, chewed up by a deep set of teeth. The flashlight had rolled away, and now lit a dim yellow arc across the alley floor. Kyungsoo, dead a second time, lay there with his chest blasted open. “I thought I could save you the trouble.”  
  
Chanyeol folded over to retch up everything in his stomach. None of it tasted more acidic than the guilt.  
  
Jongdae shivered and sunk down against the brick wall. The pain kept him present; the horror in Chanyeol’s face kept him brave. “Don’t pussy out this time,” he gritted out. “Please.” He reached for the gun in Chanyeol’s hands, and guided it forward until his forehead touched the barrel.  
  
  
-  
  
  
“I’m sorry about your friends,” Zitao says, after a while.  
  
“Story time’s over. Go to sleep,” Chanyeol says, and blows out the candle.  
  
  
-  
  
  
Two days later Chanyeol drifts awake to Baekhyun in chatterbox mode, the bed soft and compliant under him, and for a minute he forgets.  
  
“I thought it’d make me look more badass. Stupid, right? I looked like a badass ahjumma.”  
  
Chanyeol rolls over in bed, stretching out. “Who’s a badass,” he asks groggily. The connecting bathroom is open and Zitao is sitting shirtless on the toilet lid, facing the door. Baekhyun hovers behind him with a pair of scissors.  
  
“Blond Baekhyun,” says Zitao.  
  
“Sure,” Chanyeol yawns. “The identity crisis of 2012.” Zitao laughs, then stifles it when Baekhyun pretends to karate chop his shoulder. He’s got a high breathy giggle. It’s not a bad sound. “You having an identity crisis over there, Tao?”  
  
“It was getting long. I need a change.”  
  
“You came to the right guy,” Baekhyun says, which is an absolute lie because he’s never cut anyone’s hair in his life. Chanyeol, catching Zitao’s attention, mouths  _Bullshit_  exaggeratedly.   
  
“I saw that,” Baekhyun scoffs, “and I don’t even care, because this morning Zitao and I found all your family photo albums.”  
  
“I want a divorce,” Chanyeol says.  
  
“You were a very cute baby,” Zitao says, tilting his head as Baekhyun directs him to. “Very naked. Very fat.”  
  
“When I turn I’m eating you first,” Chanyeol threatens, and that’s when it’s all summoned again: where he is. Everything that’s happened. How many people are gone.  
  
He stays in bed as Zitao gets his hair sheared on the sides and in the back. Light from the opened window brightens his tan chest, emphasizing the trail of hair that disappears into his loose pants. His fringe comes out uneven, but overall Baekhyun does a decent job. Zitao cards his fingers through it as he examines himself long and hard in the bathroom mirror. He glances at Chanyeol next, searching for approval.  
  
Chanyeol lets him have it. “You got a punk rock vibe going for you,” he says.  
  
Zitao smiles at him.  
  
  
-  
  
  
A quick inventory shows how pathetically low they are on ammunition. Chanyeol hasn’t had to fire a gun in over a week, but he doesn’t like banking on luck. He and Baekhyun lay out a map of the city and mark up potential hotspots while demolishing a breakfast of undercooked porridge and canned mackerel. The first police station turns out to be a bust, enforced by a metal door with a deadbolt that Chanyeol has no chance of outsmarting. Thankfully there are a couple strays in uniform roaming the area that they dispatch easily. Two of them are carrying, your basic Glocks, chambers loaded.  
  
“One for me,” Baekhyun says with a grin, and passes the second to Zitao. “One for you.”  
  
“Hey,” Chanyeol complains halfheartedly.  
  
Baekhyun tosses him a can of pepper spray. “Godspeed.”  
  
Zitao snickers along, but later as they're walking, wordlessly hands his gun over to Chanyeol.   
  
The city hospital is next, a white giant of a building, glistening like an oasis. The parking lot is choked full with cars while ambulances jam up the main entrance. Black body bags have been lined up along the sidewalks. Other corpses reek openly in the heat. Chanyeol makes a move to go inside, but Baekhyun catches his elbow and pulls him back. Behind them, Zitao stares down at one of the decomposing nurses on the ground, like he’s committing the image to memory. For some reason that’s harder to watch. So Chanyeol nods to Baekhyun, and they let the hospital go.   
  
They keep moving. The temperature rises until Chanyeol’s skin and hair and the back of his throat burns. Everywhere they go there’s another street block he knows: coffee haunts, his classmate’s family-owned auto shop, the best mandu in town. In Seoul he learned to block it out. He hates that it’s getting to him now, climbing into his head. It’s fucking him up on the inside. Making him think the high school is a good idea.  
  
  
-  
  
  
This is what happens at the high school:  
  
Chanyeol lived, ate, and slept in these hallways for three years. This place is sucking away our youth, he’d complain to his friends. Maybe he always expected it to look like a deathtrap, because it takes him too long to register that something’s off. Then he hears the noise coming from inside the gymnasium. Sees a flash of someone’s gray face. More faces, packed like insects through the door window, and he starts to realize why they haven’t run into more trouble out in the streets. Zitao is the fastest, slamming up against the doors before they can scrape open. But by now the three of them have attracted attention, and Baekhyun chants, “Shit, shit, shit,” as the classrooms wake up too, desk legs scratching the floor. “ _Shit_ ,” when they’re trapped in the cafeteria, not enough ammo, Zitao’s smashing a window with a chair, and a kid without a left cheek or eye gets a death grip on Baekhyun’s wrist. In desperation Chanyeol wraps his belt around its throat, but not before Baekhyun’s arm is wrenched up, and back.  
  
When the blood came to Ulsan, everyone acted quickly. They’d seen what happened in Seoul, footage of the riots, the soldiers, the fires. They were going to learn from it. They were going to do better.   
  
The sick were gunned down in hospitals. Their staff with them, to be safe. The airport, subways, points of greatest contact, were cleared out indiscriminately.  
  
People brought their loved ones to the schools, where police forces had created safe zones through the use of unforgiving containment tactics. Zero tolerance for bite marks. Except this is family we’re talking about. The first cop with a bit kid almost pulled the trigger on himself instead. How was he supposed to do it? Teenager going through his rocky rebellious stage, and it was the first time in a year that he’d called him dad. So he said, “It’s alright, son. Nobody’s going to hurt you.” In the morning he woke and saw what he’d let happen. The last good thing he did was lock themselves all inside.  
  
The doors stayed closed for the next twenty-four days until Chanyeol came along and broke them open again.  
  
  
-  
  
  
Later, back in the apartment, Baekhyun asks through clenched teeth, Did you see anyone you knew inside?  
  
Chanyeol pets through his sweaty hair and lies, No. Just worry about yourself.  
  
Yeah, yeah, Baekhyun says, breathes deep. Do it now, he orders, and screams when Zitao pops his shoulder back into its socket.  
  
  
-  
  
  
Ulsan is a wasteland. They’re leaving. They just need the car.  
  
“I can’t believe you’re benching me,” Baekhyun seethes. His right arm hangs in a makeshift sling. “It’s not your call. I’m five times a better shot than you--”  
  
“And now you can’t shoot worth shit,” Chanyeol retorts. At Baekhyun’s stormy expression, he steps closer and adds, “Tao and I can handle it ourselves. We’re potty trained and everything.”  
  
Baekhyun shoves at his chest. “Barely.”  
  
“Get the bags ready. We’ll be back for you in a couple hours,” Chanyeol says, and Baekhyun shakes his head but allows Chanyeol to pull him in by the neck and kiss him goodbye, right there in front of Zitao. Baekhyun pushes into it, scrapes his teeth against Chanyeol’s tongue, pain that isn’t a hundred percent the good kind. Chanyeol had it coming.  
  
He waits until they make it all the way down the apartment stairwell before he kicks the wall so hard it feels like he just broke his toes. “Motherf--” he gasps. “Bad idea.” He drops to the floor, taking the weight off his right foot. An awful pressure builds behind his eyes. Zitao sits on one of the steps above him.   
  
“Are you and Baekhyun…” Zitao trails off.  
  
He’s obviously wanted to ask for a while. “Fucking?” Chanyeol helps.  
  
Zitao manages some tact. “Involved.”  
  
There are a thousand ways to answer that. The most accurate would be: “Not anymore.”  
  
At school they used to fool around once in a while, between the serial dating and hookups with co-eds. They indulged themselves, no strings attached. It was fun because they already lived together, knew each other at their best and worst, and could be a little thoughtless without worrying about the extra baggage. They made up obnoxious pet names to call each other in bed. “Marshmallow,” Chanyeol would coo after he swallowed. Baekhyun could go forever, was into some weird stuff, and Chanyeol was happy trying to keep up. It didn’t get serious until the country went crazy, and then they were tearing each other’s clothes off at any opportunity, couldn’t care less about privacy or condoms or being polite. Anytime they heard another statistic, or saw another body, Chanyeol matched it with Baekhyun’s dick in his mouth, his fingers buried inside Baekhyun’s ass. If he couldn’t prevent everything from falling apart, he could at least make Baekhyun come so hard his vision whited out.  
  
It ended after Bucheon, and Kyungsoo and Jongdae were the final nail. A week before they could look each other in the eye again.  
  
Another week before physical contact was back on the table, a hand on the elbow, mouth against dirty hair. The intent was different. Suddenly they were all the other person had anymore, and they had to treat each other more like it. With kindness.   
  
“We’re friends,” Chanyeol says. Lifelines sounds stupid, so he shakes Zitao’s hand off his shoulder and gets back on his feet.  
  
  
-  
  
  
High school survivors have begun to wander and fill the streets. Zitao stays low, scopes out clear paths, and avoids confronting more than two at a time, but Chanyeol is out for blood. He’s in the kind of mood where he wants to destroy something. He stops aiming for their heads first. He hacks through arms and buries his machete into soft stomach lining. Does enough and goes even further.   
  
Zitao eventually makes an edged comment, “Clean kills would be quicker,” as they advance one block at a time.   
  
“The last thing I want right now is your opinion,” Chanyeol says.   
  
Zitao won’t back off, ten minutes later as he’s swinging a metal baseball bat into the third skull in a row, this one protected by a bike helmet. “I’m not your scapegoat. You don’t get to take all your issues out on me.”   
  
The bicyclist isn’t going down fast enough. Chanyeol grunts, “Trade you,” and lets Zitao handle his sunken-eyed redhead while he slices into the bicyclist’s sternum. He thinks of Baekhyun and aims a second blow that rattles through his own skeleton. The bicyclist’s head comes halfway severed from the neck.  
  
They cut onto the road where they left the car, empty as far as they can tell. Chanyeol lets his machete drag against the ground, muscles aching, and takes the opportunity to lash out, “Look, you need to stop talking to me like you know anything about me.”  
  
“What’s there to know?” Zitao shoots back. “You’re barely a whole person anyway.”  
  
He grinds to a halt. “Say that again? What the fuck did you just say to me?”   
  
“I _said_ , what’s the difference between you and them if the only thing you care about is survival?”  
  
Chanyeol fucking  _boils_. The earth inside him fissures open, angry and hurt and hostile. “I can’t afford to be a bleeding fucking heart when all my screw-ups have a blast radius.”  
  
“You can’t control all the bad shit that’s happened either. None of us can.”  
  
“Shit like Kris, right? Is that what you tell yourself?” He gets a nasty kick out of how fast Zitao’s walls fly up. How Zitao for a quick second looks like he’s thinking about punching him again. “From what I remember, I took care of that for you. I did the dirty work--”  
  
“And I’m carrying it,” Zitao says, so fiercely that Chanyeol can’t help but look away and back to the road, which is when he notices the car and says, “Aw shit.”  
  
  
-  
  
  
Someone else tried to jack their car and got caught. A feeding frenzy has amassed in the middle of the street, biters swarming over each other for a piece. “Any ideas?” Chanyeol says, their argument sidelined. They’ve hidden behind the scrap metal blockade, close enough to glimpse a hollowed out chest cavity, a missing face.  
  
Since they’ve met, Zitao has gotten better at not flinching. “We have some rounds left.”  
  
Ten, maybe. But there are at least twenty-five biters gorging on that dead body. “We’re fucked,” Chanyeol singsongs under his breath.  
  
“We could wait them out,” Zitao says, but sunset’s coming up soon. And some of them are already lifting their faces, licking the muscle from their teeth, sniffing the sour, coppery air.   
  
“They’d find us.” Chanyeol’s grip tightens on his machete. “Forget it, we’ll steal another.”  
  
“And end up like that guy?” Zitao says. He glances around, assessing. “If I draw them far enough away, can you jump in and drive out?”  
  
“Who do you think you are, Bruce fucking Lee?”  
  
“We can meet down at the intersection. I’ll lead them around the block, and you wait for me there.”  
  
“I know these roads better.”  
  
“I’m faster than you,” Zitao says. “Way faster.”  
  
Chanyeol narrows his eyes. “This is bullshit.”  
  
But he passes over the Glock, and Zitao twists his thumb ring twice before accepting it. “Don’t leave me behind,” he says. “I’ll come back to haunt you.” Chanyeol must’ve traveled just as many miles under Zitao’s skin if he thinks he has this much to prove.  
  
“I won’t,” Chanyeol responds. He takes care of his own.  
  
  
-  
  
  
Turns out Zitao is perfect bait. He disappears ahead of the mob and Chanyeol waits until he can’t hear anything over the blood pounding in the ears. Three biters remain knelt around the body, their hands buried together inside the ribcage as if sharing bread and wine. One of them gazes blankly up at Chanyeol when he approaches. Something dark and stringy drips from her mouth. Chanyeol clutches her hair, holding her head in place as she grasps for his arms, hands too slippery to find purchase. He uses his knife, sinking it between her eyes.  
  
The other two receive the same quiet treatment, too bloated to fight back. Chanyeol wipes the sweat off his forehead and stoops closer to the bodies. He studies the distended curve of their bellies, the rot of their faces, and forces himself to picture who they used to be. Lately when he thinks of Kyungsoo, he thinks of the wrong one. As if he devoured the real person whole himself, and left just an after-image.  
  
Chanyeol squeezes his eyes shut. His chest hurts. It feels impossible to swallow. He tries to breathe through it. An inhale constricts all his corrosive bullshit, all the anger and fear and powerlessness, together in the center of his ribs.  
  
An exhale pushes it out.  
  
He sits at that intersection for a lifetime, drumming a beat against the steering wheel, growing more and more tense. When he imagines what’s happening on Zitao’s end, his mind goes dark, familiar, wrong, so he shuts it down and tries on something new for size: having some fucking faith.  
  
Five minutes later Zitao comes sprinting towards the car from his right. Only a handful of pursuers remain, and they’re all on fire.  
  
“ _What the fuck_ ,” Chanyeol says, turning the ignition on sheer motor reflex.  
  
Zitao falls in through the passenger side, soaked in sweat. Behind him, a biter reaches the door just as it slams, snarling at them and banging on the window, its skin charred and melting off.  
  
“Go,” Zitao pants. “Go now.”  
  
  
-  
  
  
“What did you  _do_?” Chanyeol asks once they’re out of the woods, parked inside the apartment complex’s front gate. The massive shot of adrenaline, of terrified relief, has him wound up and buzzing like wet metal ready for the spark.   
  
“Found a gas station,” Zitao responds, still out of breath.  
  
Chanyeol rubs a hand down his face. “You’re crazy.”  
  
Zitao laughs, shaky. “I know.”  
  
“You were gone for a while,” Chanyeol says, doesn’t know why he’s telling him.  
  
“I know,” Zitao repeats. His nose is pink with sunburn. He smells like smoke and, vaguely, burnt hair, and it’s kind of messed up but Chanyeol is really turned on right now. One look at the color in Zitao’s cheekbones, the heave of his chest, and he knows Zitao is too. So he surges forward, the console nudging into his stomach, and hauls him in for a kiss. Zitao, stunned, opens his mouth for him on instinct, and moans when Chanyeol pushes his tongue inside. Which is--pretty hot, Chanyeol thinks, grudgingly, and grinds the heel of his palm against the growing bulge in Zitao’s jeans to make him do it again.  
  
Which is how he ends up giving Huang Zitao a handjob in the front seat as if they’re both sixteen years old. Zitao grips the armrest as Chanyeol spits on his dick and slicks his fist down. He wants it as wet as he can make it. Wants it dirty and memorable. Wants to see Zitao come, and Zitao’s going to let him, his head falling back, throat bobbing as he pants, “Little more.” He clenches a fist in his own hair until Chanyeol does it for him, cheeks flushed and abs tight where Chanyeol hiked up his shirt. It’s the best he’s ever looked. Then his dick twitches and his mouth drops open and he’s coming, making a mess all over Chanyeol’s hand. Letting out a shameless little groan that gets Chanyeol so hard it’s humiliating.  
  
Zitao sags against the back of his seat. Chanyeol wipes his hand off on his jeans and tries to compress his heartbeat back to normal.  
  
“Uh,” Zitao says. “Thanks.”  
  
Chanyeol shrugs. “Don’t mention it.”  
  
It takes Zitao a minute to catch his breath, fix his clothes, but soon he’s reaching over, saying, “Here, I’ll do you.”  
  
Chanyeol’s dick throbs with obvious interest, but he pushes Zitao back. “I’m good.” The image of Zitao as he comes--unrestrained, free--is burned into his brain, and he hates thinking about what Zitao might get to see in exchange.  
  
Zitao tries a second time, gets shoved away halfheartedly, goes for a third. “You don’t like blowjobs? I’m saying it right, aren’t I? Blowjob?”  
  
“Why do you wanna blow me so badly?” Chanyeol asks without stopping him again.  
  
Zitao’s mouth curls. “Don’t be embarrassed.”  
  
“I’m pretty sure mine’s bigger than yours.”  
  
Not that Zitao’s isn’t a good size. The weight of it seared against Chanyeol’s palm.  
  
Zitao pulls Chanyeol’s underwear down and makes an evaluative noise. “You’re right,” he says, and bends down to put his mouth on Chanyeol’s dick.  
  
From this angle Chanyeol gets a view of the new rough crop of Zitao’s hair, barely long enough to pull. Zitao’s less of a tease than he thought but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t tease. He sucks kisses up the side of Chanyeol’s cock, rubs his lips against the tip, getting them wet, until Chanyeol growls, “C’mon you little--” Zitao digs blunt nails into the soft part of his thigh, then takes him all the way into his throat, and Chanyeol’s knees honest-to-god go weak. He can’t believe he almost turned it down. He watches his cock glide deep into Zitao’s mouth until he can’t handle it anymore and has to blink up at the car ceiling, feeling it all over, the way Zitao blows him like he’s on a mission. Peels him sweetly like a fruit: cutting through the skin, bruised flesh, and finding what’s left of the core.   
  
  
-  
  
  
When it’s over, Zitao won’t stop grinning at him.  
  
“Jesus,” Chanyeol says, yanking his pants back up. He wonders if Baekhyun’ll be able to smell it on them or in the car. “Don’t make it into more than it is.”  
  
“Which is what?” Zitao says, but the smugness fades. “Behind you.”  
  
A biter has shuffled its way through the gate. It lurches up against the back bumper, scrabbling at the rear window with its hands, black tongue reaching out and hunting for a taste.  
  
“Peeping tom, huh,” Chanyeol says. “What’re you doing?”  
  
“Taking care of it,” Zitao says, retrieving his baseball bat from under the seat.  
  
“Don’t,” Chanyeol says without his own permission. In one word he feels as if he’s given away something huge and nebulous.  
  
“Why not?”  
  
Chanyeol opens the driver side door. “Cause I said so, okay?”  
  
His body is sluggish just after coming, but after the day he’s had, one biter is nothing. It’s fixated on Zitao still inside the car, and all Chanyeol has to do is approach from behind and slide his knife through its skull. He meets Zitao’s eyes through the glass. Zitao probably thinks he’s showing off. He wishes that was it, and not an issue of sudden onset empathy. The biter slumps forward and Chanyeol pushes it into the gravel. Dirty work is something you do on behalf of someone else. Right then, in that moment, he’s okay with doing Zitao’s. Let Zitao keep the shrinking part of himself that doesn’t find it easy. The part that hasn’t learned better yet.  
  
  
-  
  
  
“Hey baby,” Chanyeol says, rolling the window down. “Wanna go for a ride?”  
  
Baekhyun throws one of their camping bags into the trunk. Zitao helps him with the other two. “You guys took so long I thought you died.”   
  
“Were you sad?” Zitao presses. “Did you cry?”  
  
In the rearview mirror Chanyeol catches Baekhyun holding his thumb and index finger an inch apart, as if to say  _A little bit_.  
  
The sun is on its way down, and in the pinkish glow Ulsan doesn’t appear so dead. The buildings go from gray to dark blue. Chanyeol maneuvers through biter herds that try to chase after the car, the trick of light returning some color to their faces. Zitao falls asleep before they even reach the freeway. He topples into Baekhyun’s good shoulder and stays there. Baekhyun shifts to better accommodate him.  
  
Chanyeol doesn’t have a clue where to go until he reads the name off the green road signs, and then he’s gunning it down the next exit ramp.   
  
  
-  
  
  
Chanyeol shakes Zitao by the shoulder, putting his mouth against his ear as he says his name. The thing about Ulsan is that it’s coastal too. Jinha is typically packed this time of month with windsurfers and fishermen, but today it’s an empty purgatory. The sea breeze is as humid as ever. The tide darkens the sand and swallows the beach. Zitao wakes up drowsily at Chanyeol’s urging, but it’s the sound of waves that finishes the job. He uses Chanyeol to pull himself upright, and doesn’t let go after he’s done. Chanyeol allows it. They made progress today.  
  
“What’s up?”  
  
“Sorry for what I said before,” Zitao says quietly, holding onto Chanyeol’s wrist. “About you not being a person. I don’t really believe that.”  
  
Chanyeol looks at him, throat dry. In his head he brings the back of his palm up impulsively to Zitao’s cheek, warmth seeping into his knuckles. In reality he doesn’t do anything, just waits for Zitao to remove his hand.  
  
“Fifteen minutes,” he tells him. “Then we have to go, alright?”  
  
“Alright,” says Zitao, understanding compromise.  
  
Chanyeol joins up with Baekhyun. They sit together right above the waterline, sand matted identically to their bared legs. Sea foam laps at their ankles. Chanyeol’s feet are sore and blistered, and it feels painfully good to let them soak in the cold water.  
  
“How’s your shoulder?” he asks.  
  
“The aspirin’s doing its job,” Baekhyun says. His face is damp from the spray, shining. “This is a cool place. Are we sticking around?”  
  
Chanyeol dips his hand into the next wave that rushes the beach, bringing seaweed and broken shells. “Actually, I’ve never been to China,” he says.  
  
Baekhyun thinks on it, then says, “Me neither.”  
  
Further out, Zitao wades through the water until the tides crash in at his knees, drenching the denim rolled around his calves. His boots and socks are a shadow in his hands. He glances backwards, as if he can sense them watching. This far away, Chanyeol can’t make out his expression, but he stands out there tall and enduring like a buoy, so it must be the same expression Zitao wore as he held a shovel in his hands, the lamp illuminating his face. After a moment, he turns back to the sea, so Chanyeol does too, the sun low on his back, Baekhyun beside him humming under his breath the song that goes  _I want to cross over, I want to go home, but she says go back, go back to the world._  



	4. young folks (chanyeol/kris)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's not who you go with, it's who takes you home. (highschool au)

Chanyeol is technically, ostensibly grounded. If you want to get into semantics, he says, which Kris absolutely does.  
  
“Your dad likes me,” he says, motioning at Amber to turn the music down. “He  _trusts_  me.”  
  
“Yeah, so, he’ll never suspect you,” Chanyeol says. There’s a muffled thump, followed by the distinct snap of branches.  
  
“Are you climbing out the window,” Kris says flatly.  
  
“Come pick me up, you’re the greatest,” Chanyeol shouts, then hangs up.  
  
Kris rakes a hand through his hair before he remembers it has recently undergone thirty minutes of styling. “Turn around,” he says. “We’re doing a prison break.”  
  
“ _Yes_ ,” Amber says, getting into character by committing four consecutive traffic violations.  
  
  
  
  
  
They pull up in Amber’s beat up old Ford a few houses down the street. Kris body slams the passenger side door before it lets him out. He sees Chanyeol half running, half sneaking towards them in the dark, full leg movements limited by the pull of his dress around his thighs.   
  
His dress?  
  
“Huh,” Kris says, when Chanyeol is close enough for him to get a good look. He’s decked out in a short, fitted white dress paired with his ratty high-top sneakers, long hair falling just above his shoulders in unruly orange waves. There’s a pink burn mark on his neck from the curling iron.  
  
“You’re really doing it?”  
  
Chanyeol shrugs, shoulders broad and bared. “What am I good for if I don’t follow through?”  
  
Halfway through sophomore year, Chanyeol and Baekhyun made a bet. Kris was never privy to the details. In fact everyone’d forgotten until last week when Baekhyun smuggled a dress into Chanyeol's locker accompanied by the latest prom issue of Cosmo. Evidently Chanyeol’d lost. “Every failure is a new opportunity,” Chanyeol’d said, full of great purpose, discreetly fishing his gum out of his mouth to stick it in Baekhyun’s hair. He was taking a philosophy elective this semester. Kris was taking it by extension, hanging out with Chanyeol in the library during their free period and working on his term paper while Chanyeol amassed two dozen papercuts on each hand trying to get through his Kant readings. “I don’t understand any of this,” Chanyeol whined around the cap of his highlighter. “I just want it to be over.”  
  
Kris stole a glance at Chanyeol’s right palm, the pink Band-Aid running straight across his heart line, and had the absurd thought,  _I don’t_.  
  
“Nice ride,” Chanyeol says appreciatively as Kris yanks open the car door and unleashes the sound of Amber blasting Fuck the Police. His dress rides up as he climbs into the backseat, flashing his boxer briefs to the world, but mostly to Kris. Black, Kris notes. His stomach tightens up in response. That’s not good.  
  
  
  
  
  
Unsurprisingly, Chanyeol isn’t allowed inside the dance. His appearance is inappropriate, controversial, and falls under the umbrella of disorderly conduct. Chanyeol makes his eyes big and sad. Amber does, too. Kris doesn’t know how to, but either way the teacher supervisor is unmoved.   
  
“Fuck that,” Baekhyun declares, the third thing he says after coming out to meet them in front of the school. (The first was, upon seeing Chanyeol, “This is the best day of my life.” The second, “So how much did you shave?”) The bass thumps through the gymnasium walls. “We were all talking about hitting the beach anyway. Give me half an hour to round up the gang?”  
  
“Alright,” Chanyeol agrees, sitting on the hood of Amber’s car. “But don’t invite that Baekhyun guy. He sucks.”  
  
“I can wait out here with you,” Kris offers, when Baekhyun’s gone and Amber has run off too, looking for Krystal.  
  
“Yeah? What about your date?”  
  
“She won’t miss me.” Kris is Amber’s nice Chinese boy, a way out of having to explain being gay to her parents before college. Sometimes, though, Kris can tell, it’s right there on the tip of her tongue. For senior superlatives, Amber and Krystal were voted  _Best Friends_. It was part funny, part insulting. After that Krystal would say, “Do you wanna go do ‘friend’ stuff?” five tons of sarcasm rocketing through the flex of her air quotes, and they’d spend the rest of lunch making out in the second floor girls’ bathroom, where the unlocked door dared other people to walk in.   
  
Kris was predictably  _Who You’d Bring Home To Mom And Dad._  Chanyeol and Baekhyun made up two thirds of  _The Three Stooges_ , but Chanyeol received one of his own too:  _Best Smile._  “His teeth are very white,” Kyungsoo said diplomatically, while Jongdae said, “They misspelled Serial Killer.” Kris never fessed up—Chanyeol already thought he was hot stuff—but he’d voted for him. No one was saying Prettiest, or Least Manic. It was just the kind of smile that made you smile back. It got Kris through biology lab, because when Chanyeol took a pair of dissecting scissors to their fetal pig and said, “This is gonna be sick,” the gleeful look on his face distracted Kris from wanting to throw up all over his shoes. Not a Million Dollar Smile, but easily Fifty Bucks, the cost of a prom ticket, or a good concert, a full tank of gas ready for all the weekends Chanyeol said, “Let’s get out of here,” and Kris said, “Okay, but there’s no way in hell you’re driving.”  
  
  
  
  
  
To pass the time, they sneak over onto the football field. The floodlights are off, but between the moon and the parking lot, there’s enough light for Kris to see Chanyeol ahead of him, long legs taking the stairs two at a time. When they reach the top of the bleachers, Chanyeol pulls a plain plastic bottle out of the purse he’s been carrying around and hands it over. Kris uncaps it, drinks, and chokes.  
  
“That’s not water,” he coughs.  
  
Chanyeol sits down on the highest bench and props his feet up indelicately onto the seat below. “Happy prom.”  
  
Kris takes another pull, ready for it this time around, before passing the bottle back. The vodka burns down his throat, warmth spreading outwards from his chest. He never actually gave a shit about prom. Graduation has been the shining finish line from the first time he walked through the doors, the next four years all planned out. He’s walking out in a week with a 3.9 GPA, Ivy bound. Chanyeol got into his UC of choice. Everyone has somewhere to go. The rest is loose ends.  
  
“So why are you grounded?” Kris asks, loosening his tie and slipping off his suit jacket, which he drapes around Chanyeol’s shoulders.  
  
“Got caught smoking,” Chanyeol says. “Dad just wanted to squeeze in one last slap on the wrist before I officially outgrow it. I’ll be free in time for grad night.”  
  
“Not if he finds out about today,” Kris says.  
  
Chanyeol rubs the back of his neck, ruining his half-assed curls even further. “What was I gonna do, miss out?”  
  
“You are missing out,” Kris reminds him. They’re far enough from the school that they can’t hear the music anymore. With the sun down, air that’s warm during the day carries a bite. Blood surfaces to Chanyeol’s cheekbones, visible even in the dark.  
  
He lifts the bottle back to his mouth, looking out across the endless green turf. “Nah,” he says. “This is better.”  
  
  
  
  
  
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” Chanyeol says, and lists on his fingers: “Empire has the best plot, the best development, the best reveal, Luke gets his fucking _hand_  cut off—“  
  
Kris butts in, “If that’s your criteria for a good movie, Anakin literally has no biological limbs left by the end—”  
  
“Are you shitting me? Has our entire friendship been a sham?”  
  
Kris tries to keep his expression blank. It’s hard when he’s buzzed. “The effects were a lot better in Sith.”  
  
Chanyeol drives his shoulder into Kris’, making Kris sway out, back in like a pendulum. “The east coast can have you and your shitty opinions,” he says. “Hey, text Baekhyun.”  
  
Kris whips out his phone, types  _how much longer?_  and puts it aside again as Chanyeol knuckles at his eyes. Make-up is foreign to him, and therefore easy to forget. He licked all the color off his lips within the first five minutes in Amber’s car. His sister’s handiwork has in the last half hour gradually transferred from Chanyeol’s face onto the side of his hand. Kris reaches across before he can think about doing it.  
  
“Hold still,” he says, and sweeps his thumb under Chanyeol’s left eye, cleaning the smudge of mascara along his lower lash line. What’s left of a perfectly drawn wing tip is streaked across the edge of Chanyeol’s eyelid. Kris rubs at it until it clears, the skin there soft and thin. Then he does the same with Chanyeol’s right eye, carefully, as Chanyeol exhales right against the pulse in Kris’ wrist.  
  
When he’s done, he pulls away. Stops holding his breath. Chanyeol remains, his face tilted up by an infinitesimal amount.  
  
“Baekhyun really did a number on you,” Kris says.   
  
Chanyeol leans back and finds the vodka. “Did I tell you what the bet was about?”  
  
“You didn’t tell anyone,” Kris says.  
  
“It’s pretty funny.” Chanyeol passes the bottle again, then cranes backwards and stares up at the sky. “I had the biggest crush on you sophomore year.”  
  
Kris drops the bottle. It rolls sadly across the bleacher step, spilling everywhere, before falling through the gap and down into the torn up grass below. Chanyeol laughs loudly.  
  
“Dude, I thought you knew.”  
  
“I did,” Kris says, “I just didn’t think you were ever going to say it.”  
  
“You never looked like you wanted to hear it,” Chanyeol says. “Anyway, the bet was, if you and me were going out by prom, Baekhyun’d wear the dress.”  
  
Chanyeol’s interest had been as subtle as an atomic bomb. He followed Kris through the halls like a devoted dog, helped carry his books to class without asking. At the same time, he got around pretty often, went through a seven month phase of only dating sullen, skinny underclassmen. Meanwhile Kris was in a Serious Relationship with his future prospects and didn’t know how to factor in a confound as big as Chanyeol. Chanyeol didn’t seem to hold it against him. By their junior year he’d toned down the hero worship. They started studying together more often, Chanyeol on his bed, Kris at the desk, throwing their math notes at each other from across the room as if the floor between them was lined with stakes. High school was a delicate structure, Kris knew. You were lucky to find any kind of equilibrium, let alone sustain it for so long. But now it’s almost over and he kind of wants the risk. Wants his due.   
  
He tries to wish the alcohol back into his possession. “You guys made that deal two years in advance?”  
  
“Yeah, shouldn’t I be over you by now?” Chanyeol grins. It has the same effect as always. Makes Kris feel less like he’s standing above something scary, scalpel in hand, no clue where to start.  
  
“Maybe I’m the One,” he jokes.  
  
“If that’s true, we’re both in trouble,” Chanyeol says, looking straight at him. “You gonna kiss me, or do I have to wear a leotard next?”  
  
“Fuck it, yeah,” Kris says, and just goes for it.  
  
  
  
  
  
Two years of foreplay means Chanyeol is really eager about finally getting his hands on Kris. There’s kissing and then there’s what he’s doing, his tongue in Kris’ mouth, tasting like cheap vodka, slick and vulgar enough to make Kris want to blush. The jacket falls off Chanyeol’s shoulders as he wraps Kris’ tie around his palm and uses it to angle him into the kiss like a leash. The tightness around Kris’ throat is unexpectedly hotwired straight to his dick, but what’s better is the wounded noise Chanyeol makes when Kris slaps his hand away and hauls him into his lap.   
  
Chanyeol’s dress bunches up as he gets his knees apart and around Kris’ waist, pressed up half-hard against Kris’ stomach, branding him through his dress shirt. Kris licks the roof of Chanyeol’s mouth and feels the twitch in Chanyeol’s cock like a sledgehammer.   
  
At some point Kris’ phone buzzes. He breaks the kiss to read the new text as Chanyeol redirects his mouth onto Kris’ neck, sucking hard.  
  
“Baekhyun says we leave in five minutes.”  
  
Chanyeol backs up, wipes his mouth. “I wanna make you come first.”  
  
“Jesus,” Kris says, dizzy, but Chanyeol’s sliding out of his lap. His knees hit the bleacher with a metallic punch that winds Kris up with anticipation. “What if I have a third date rule?”  
  
“Yeah right,” Chanyeol says, undoing Kris’ belt and pants, getting his dick out. It curves up towards his stomach, thick and flushed, the cold air making Kris shiver. Chanyeol looks at it, sort of glazed, looks back up at Kris, his pupils blown. He sinks further between Kris’ legs and bends down and swallows half of him in one go.  
  
Kris’ mind goes fuzzy, his dick filling up against Chanyeol’s tongue. Chanyeol’s blowjob proficiency is still up in the air but he goes after it like it’s his dirtiest fantasy come true. Like any second someone’s going to come and take it away from him. He swirls his tongue around the head of Kris’ cock, takes more each time he slides back down, takes more until he makes himself choke. Kris’ head tips forward as he groans. “Stop trying to be a porn star,” he says roughly, gripping the hard edge of the bleacher. Chanyeol laughs, deep, his mouth stuffed. He grabs one of Kris’ hands off the bench and guides it into his hair, so Kris cups the back of Chanyeol’s skull, digging his fingers through the soft curls. The night chill makes the inside of Chanyeol's mouth seem so fucking hot. He thrusts his hips forward, pushing his cock in blunt and smooth until it bumps up against the back of Chanyeol’s throat. Chanyeol moans around it, satisfied, and then he goes quiet, just the wet sounds his mouth makes as Kris fucks into it steadily.   
  
Five minutes isn’t enough. Five years wouldn’t be enough, and Kris wasted two never letting Chanyeol blow him. He wants to go back and hold him down against his bed, the lockers, a library bookshelf. More time, all summer to blow Chanyeol in return and get a real taste. The thought makes his cock jerk against Chanyeol’s tongue. He comes sudden and hard, biting into the side of his hand so he doesn’t embarrass himself.  
  
Chanyeol pulls off and spits out Kris’ come onto the bleachers. Kris doesn’t have it in himself to feel insulted. He lets go of Chanyeol’s hair but Chanyeol doesn’t move, pressing his sweaty forehead against Kris’ thigh. In the dark, with the blood flowing back to his brain, Kris finally makes out Chanyeol’s dress hiked the rest of the way around his hips. Chanyeol’s hand shoved up under it, desperately jacking himself off.   
  
“Let me help,” Kris says, voice hoarse.  
  
“No,” Chanyeol pants, “just—stay there.”  
  
Kris doesn’t have a good view but the knowledge alone comes with a hot rush through his gut. All he can do is watch the rhythmic movement of Chanyeol’s arm, the pronounced sharpness of his shoulderblades as his spine folds over. He fills in the rest with his imagination, Chanyeol’s cockhead shiny and wet as it slides through his fist, Chanyeol’s slack mouth, the taste of Kris’ spunk leftover inside it, glassy-eyed, flush-faced, wanting to come so bad he can’t hold off for another second. Kris could’ve had this a long time ago but it wouldn’t have been as good. Chanyeol kneeling over his lap, breathing hard, like somebody tamed him. Chanyeol building up and building up and finally getting what he wants.  
  
Chanyeol goes tense, shaking apart as he comes inside his dress, his face buried against Kris’ leg, Kris’ soft cock tucked up against his curls. He turns liquid through the aftershocks. Kris smooths Chanyeol’s hair away from his forehead, out of his eyes. Chanyeol rouses, groggily. Then he turns, and slowly brushes his mouth across the inside of Kris’ clothed thigh. 


	5. the interpretive act of waving goodbye (lay/lu han)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> exo prepares for a major change in lineup. (band au)

_track 1_  
  
Yixing is calling it Losing Lu Han. This is after a week of referring to it as the Lu Han Problem, until he understood that it wasn’t a problem, Lu Han was leaving, that was the end of it. The next day it’d been Lu Han That Judas Motherfucker, which was callous in a way Yixing didn’t know how to sustain. Instead he thought of the days that follow a flood, the stillness of the murky water, the calm wreckage of stranded bikes and trees and homes.  
  
“We’ll work it out,” Kris tells him, after a meeting with their manager and two hours on the phone with a label rep.  
  
“When I feel bad, I get something new pierced,” Zitao tells him, showing off his new metal. “You could come with me next time.”  
  
“Wow,” Lu Han tells him, when he stops by to find Yixing surrounded by take-out cartons and new song material, running on fumes. “You look like someone who could use some company.”  
  
“You look like someone who part of me still wants to punch in the throat,” Yixing says. He’d made Lu Han a spare key half a year ago. He was always getting locked out, and Lu Han was easier to call than the landlord. His latest birthday, Lu Han snuck in to bake him a cake, and set the oven on fire. He kept clothes in an extra drawer and a toothbrush next to Yixing’s by the bathroom sink for the times he woke up hungover on the couch. Yixing’d never thought to ask for the key back. Even right now, watching with a little gratification as Lu Han’s hand goes up around his throat.  
  
Lu Han sits on the corner of Yixing’s desk, and grabs the lukewarm rice with one hand and a leaf of lined paper with the other.  
  
“When Did Your Heart Go Missing,” he reads, mouth full.   
  
Yixing spins his chair towards Lu Han, away from his composition software. “Wait, don’t read that one. Sorry. It gets mean.”  
  
Lu Han looks at him for a moment, then lifts his chin as he turns his face, giving Yixing the map of his cheek and jawline. “Go ahead,” he says. “One free shot.”  
  
“I’m not going to punch you.”  
  
“I won’t fight back, I promise,” Lu Han says. He sets the food aside and folds his hands placidly in his lap.   
  
Not as if Yixing would ever punch anyone anyway. He avoids even running over two day old roadkill. After some time, Yixing lifts his hand and brings it open and soft to Lu Han’s cheek, holding it there. Lu Han shuts his eyes like that’s worse.  
  
Losing Lu Han makes the whole situation sound like a big funeral affair or magic trick when all it was was Lu Han breaking into Yixing’s apartment to coax him out of bed with fresh coffee. This was around a month before they were booked to start recording the new EP, Lu Han’s jacket soaked through from the rain but somehow managing to shelter the perfume of cigarette smoke. “I’m coming in,” Lu Han said. Yixing heard him peel off his outer layer of wet clothes. He crawled into bed next to Yixing and dragged the covers over both their heads, bringing the winter with him.  
  
“What’s wrong?” Yixing rubbed his nose. “You smell like an ashtray.”  
  
“Nervous habit. Are you awake?” Lu Han asked. “C’mon, I need you to be awake.”  
  
“I’m awake,” Yixing said. He opened his eyes to see Lu Han’s intent expression, his tiny frown, the dark brown in his eyes. The morning seeped through to wrap Lu Han in light, skin tinted green from the color of Yixing’s sheets. His bangs were a damp mess and his cheeks were ruddy from being outside and he looked like someone Yixing had just dreamed up. That was the magic trick. The Illusion of Having Lu Han.  
  
Lu Han said, quietly: “After we finish the EP, I think I’m going to quit.”  
  
Yixing’s circulation slowed. His fingertips and toes went cold first, the rest of him next, until the numbness made a home in the center of his chest. “That’s good,” he said. “It’ll be better for your health.”  
  
“You know that’s not what I’m talking about,” Lu Han said.  
  
“I’m giving you the chance to take it back.”  
  
He waited for Lu Han’s face to close off, but Lu Han’d forgotten how to around him. Yixing was an honest person and for a brief sixty seconds he honestly hated their proximity, how it felt false, not the real thing but the stain that it left. Lu Han didn’t take it back. He reached for the edge of the covers to throw them off again, and said, “I got you coffee. Come out when you’re ready.”  
  
  
  
  
  
_track 2_  
  
Kris says that they should begin to consider auditioning a new vocalist. This sets off the only fight he and Yixing have had since Kris was eleven years old, Yixing was ten, and Kris said, “Don’t climb that tree,” and Yixing said, “I’m gonna climb it.”  
  
Yixing dislocated his shoulder. Kris led him home by the hand, shouting at him, Yixing answering between clenched teeth  _Be nicer to me, I’m dying_. He was laid up in bed, missing a few days of school. Kris didn’t come visit. After they made up Kris said that he’d been freaked out by the way Yixing’s arm hung from its socket, useless, no longer a part of him.  
  
The next decade mellowed Yixing out until, at 22, when he said, “I think we could make it, we have something special,” the momentum behind it was better built than the trees that had come before. Once Minseok retired his drum sticks for a steadier career path, Kris brought in Zitao, who wouldn’t get the undercut for awhile, but already had a love for punching holes into his ears, and too much raw talent for whatever local college band Kris stole him from. Yixing eventually brought in Lu Han, who he’d found at an art opening singing jazz standards without changing the pronouns, his dress shirt sleeves pushed up to his elbows, his waistcoat inky black, and the second thing Yixing thought had been  _Good control, good tone, needs more presence_  and the first thing had been a dull, inescapable  _Uh oh_. Fast forward over two years and their first studio album was gaining some critical popularity. That summer they started touring with Summerteeth, which for Yixing was six months of paranoia that Baekhyun, Summerteeth’s frontman, was going to poach half of his band.  
  
“Watch out,” Lu Han said as their tour bus loitered at the gas station. “I saw him yesterday with Zitao doing that same thing.”  
  
Yixing climbed onto Lu Han’s bunk to peer out at Baekhyun and Kris chatting, illuminated under the tall light fixtures. “Doing what?”  
  
“You know, this one.”  
  
Lu Han slid his hand flirtatiously down Yixing’s arm. Yixing was still keyed up from the show, the adrenaline barely worn off, and he pushed into it without thinking. By the time he noticed, Lu Han had too. They both stopped. Lu Han’s index finger and thumb circled around Yixing’s wrist before they withdrew.  
  
Outside, Baekhyun did it one more time, saying goodbye to Kris before he was pulled back towards his own bus by Chanyeol (“I’m the summer, he’s the teeth,” Baekhyun’d explained). Yixing stood up, idly flexing both wrists as if he could sense a difference between them. Sometimes he had to stop to take inventory of himself. Guitar. Check. Wallet, keys, hands, all ten toes. Check. The capacity to meet Lu Han’s eyes. Check.  
  
Lu Han stretched out a foot to get in Yixing’s way while Yixing changed his shirt in preparation for Baekhyun’s pub crawl. “Anyway, if he makes a move on you tonight, try to stay strong.”  
  
“Remember the 48 hour rule for missing persons,” Yixing joked, as Zitao piled back onto the bus with a bag of gummy worms, energy drinks, and the lottery tickets he was collecting from every city they performed in.  
  
“Don’t worry,” Lu Han said, “I’ll find you.”  
  
Fast forward another half year and Zitao never wins the lottery. Lu Han’s loyalty runs out. When Kris keeps trying to negotiate with him, saying, “We could call Jongdae and see what his commitments look like,” and Yixing is tired of arguing, he disengages and walks out through the sliding glass door onto Kris’ apartment balcony. It’s below freezing tonight. Yixing crams his hands into his pockets and inclines his upper body over the railing, blinking down at the dark city under him. He wants to throw his anger out and watch it ice over. These days his edges are sharper than he remembers them being. Like he’s regressed back to being his ten year old self, hot-blooded, unpolished, brittle and inelastic.   
  
Before he can finish losing all the sensation in his nose and ears, Kris comes out with a long coat that he drapes over Yixing’s shoulders. He hands Yixing an open beer.  
  
“Can we just produce the EP first,” Yixing says, “and discuss how to replace Lu Han later.”  
  
“Fine,” Kris says, and then, “Don’t blame yourself anymore, okay?”  
  
Yixing huffs a laugh and says, “Okay.” As if Kris hadn’t stopped talking to him for a full week once because when he looked at Yixing’s shoulder he saw something that was his own fault. As if Yixing isn’t the same kind of person, looking at Lu Han force himself out of the joint that connects them, the arm escaping its body, the extension rejecting its whole.  
  
  
  
  
  
_track 3_  
  
They have one final band practice before their recording schedule starts. It’s a nightmare, worse than when Yixing’s grandmother landed in the hospital from a house accident and Yixing, unable to go see her, spent the week detached from his own hands. The first hour is tense, and everyone’s sloppy, before Kris’ bassline cuts out and the rest of them follow.  
  
“I feel disappointed that you guys are acting this way,” he says.  
  
Yixing isn’t in the mood. “Do we have to do this?”  
  
“No,” Zitao says as he stabs a drumstick in Kris’ direction. “We don’t.”  
  
This is something Kris picked up back in junior high when his parents had still been in couples therapy, before the divorce. The counselor called them I Feel statements. Lu Han calls them the symptoms of Kris’ power-tripping. “I feel disappointed,” Kris repeats, with a dark look around. For a minute, no one speaks up.  
  
“I feel sad,” Lu Han finally says, “that I’m leaving.”  
  
Zitao’s ringed fingers click against one of his high toms, and the sound reverberates through the rehearsal room. “I feel sad that Lu Han’s leaving too,” he says, “and hurt that he won’t say why. ‘Creative differences’ isn’t good enough. We have creative differences about everything. None of us can agree on merchandise fonts.”  
  
Lu Han shrugs, his mouth tight. Yixing realizes that he’s waiting for him to take his turn. He digs inside and finds a labyrinth, so instead he says, “I don’t know what I feel.”  
  
“That’s okay,” Lu Han says, “because this is stupid. I truly, sincerely feel that this is stupid.”  
  
“That’s not a feeling, that’s an opinion,” Kris says.  
  
Zitao offers, “I feel concerned that lately everything Yixing writes sounds like an anthem for people who want to drown themselves in their bathtubs.”  
  
“I feel attacked,” Yixing interrupts.  
  
“I’m with Zitao,” Kris says. “I don’t know how much more distilled acoustic sadness this band can take before we all have to grow beards.”  
  
“I like Yixing’s gloomy stuff,” Lu Han defends, while Yixing grins at the floor in gratitude. “So I feel that you can all blow me.”  
  
When they exit the building later, Zitao runs out in just his t-shirt, waving goodbye, his jacket raised to protect his hair. Kris disappears into the rain next. Down to him and Lu Han, Lu Han scrubs a hand through his hair, already frizzing, and says plaintively, “I look like a poodle.”  
  
Yixing fixes the weight of his guitar case on his shoulder so he can open his umbrella. “Walk you to your car?”  
  
Lu Han stoops under it with him, huddled in close to avoid the water spilling off the ends. The umbrella’s a little on the small side. Yixing keeps forgetting to buy a new one. As they walk, he starts to tilt it too far to the left until Lu Han reaches to adjust his arm. “You’re dripping on me,” he says. Yixing thinks it over, then does it again. Lu Han sticks his hand out under the rain, gets it nice and wet, and shoves it up Yixing’s shirt.  
  
The fact is: Yixing never slept with Lu Han because it’s a universal truth that the moment you sleep with another person in your band, the earth opens up and the alignment of the continents shifts and you can never take it back. They had a good thing going for them. Even the year everyone had been working shitty jobs and pooling money together for storage room rent, covering for Zitao’s share because he still had tuition, it’d felt like exactly where Yixing wanted to be, amidst people with inexhaustible creativity. That was the year he and Lu Han stayed up until four in the morning shooting their mouths off about family, families that have money but you hate relying on it, families with a well of love so deep you could swim through to the other side of the world, found families. Lu Han fell asleep on Yixing’s couch for the first time. Yixing brought him the pillow from his own bed because he didn’t have any extras. He lifted Lu Han onto it, brushed his hair away from his cheek, and thought  _This should be enough, shouldn’t it?_  So he waited for it to stop being such a big fucking deal, for the cave inside of him to close, and when it didn’t, he filled it with songs.  
  
The fact is: Yixing never slept with Lu Han but he may as well have. Maybe the way he smiled at Lu Han changed, the way he talked about him. He’d be lying if he thought it didn’t gleam through the music, as if what he wrote couldn’t be separated into two eras, before and after Lu Han. Yixing has known him for over three years now, which is too long to stay hidden away. Maybe Lu Han saw.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says just in case, because they’re almost at Lu Han’s car.  
  
It seems to catch Lu Han off guard. He glances over, rolling his bottom lip between his teeth. “Me too,” he says, hesitant to fish out his keys, “but you didn’t do anything.”  
  
“You wouldn’t be leaving for anything less,” Yixing says.  
  
“I’m leaving the band,” Lu Han says. “I’m not leaving you.”  
  
  
  
  
  
_track 4_  
  
Zitao has wanted a new tattoo for months. He shows up to the recording studio with the silhouette of an airplane on the back of his right shoulder, flying out from under his sleeveless shirt. Departures and arrivals, he explains.  
  
“Did it hurt?” Yixing asks, smoothing his thumb over the sore, pink skin.  
  
“Nah,” Zitao shrugs. “You should’ve seen how hard Kris was squeezing my hand, though. Like he thought it was Lamaze class or some shit.”  
  
“Hey,” Kris protests.  
  
Zitao wraps Kris in an exaggerated bear hug. Lu Han arrives in time to snap a picture on his phone. He smells like he’s been smoking again.  
  
Their producer, Henry, is wickedly cool and good at his job. He understands Yixing’s perfectionism without enabling it, which is the only reason their previous album made it out of the studio. Today, they lay the basic tracks with little difficulty. Kris and Zitao have a good vibe together and they can nail a song within the first two takes. But even when Yixing wants five guitar overdubs, or asks Henry to procure for him a sax, stand-up bass, and xylophone, recording vocals is always the hardest part. Lu Han’s at his best onstage, natural and effusive, playing with the audience or getting in Yixing’s face or hanging back by Zitao’s drum kit to serenade him. In a live room, he alternates between rising to the pressure and shying away from it.  
  
“You need to tell me what you’re looking for,” Henry says, after they’ve made Lu Han complete yet another take. Track five is Yixing’s distilled beard-growing sadness track. Behind the glass, Lu Han pushes the headphones down to hang around his neck, and twists open his water bottle. He glances up at Yixing, waiting. Henry motions for him to come back out.  
  
“Do you want me to do it again?” Lu Han asks.  
  
“No,” Henry says, “let’s figure out how we want this to sound first.”  
  
Three years with EXO, fighting for a name, clawing for a modicum of recognition, and Yixing has never not known how he wanted something to sound. He bites his thumbnail as Henry plays him the isolated vocal track. They bring in the instrumentation, Kris and Zitao’s basic track that they’d recorded with Yixing in the control room telling them to  _Do it soft, even softer, don’t make that face at me, Zitao_. Lu Han carries all four minutes. Listening to him now is harder than trying to distinguish someone’s face in the rain.   
  
“We should double-track Lu Han for the chorus,” Henry suggests.  
  
Yixing turns to Lu Han. “What do you think?”  
  
“I hate double-tracking,” Lu Han says--he’s always had a hard time listening back to his own voice--but he’s standing up again anyway.  
  
“It needs a thicker sound,” Henry says. “Right now it’s too bare. Not enough depth.”  
  
“Have Yixing add a backing vocal track,” Zitao says, leaning against Kris, his eyes on his phone as he kicks his legs up onto the chair where Lu Han was sitting. “More texture that way.”  
  
Lu Han mouths to Yixing,  _I really hate double-tracking._  
  
When it comes to production, Yixing likes having control of all the guitar overdubs, and Lu Han typically records his own backing vocals. But when they perform together, Yixing’s always the one singing back-up, and Lu Han always takes over the second guitar line. When’s the next time they’ll get the chance? Yixing puts the headphones on, listens to the mix, and when he opens his mouth he’s onstage picturing the hollowed sound that this track is supposed to fill. He’s picturing Zitao’s transparently sentimental tattoo. He’s picturing Lu Han watching him from the other room, where the studio light reflects off the glass so that he’s already half-gone.  
  
He does a few takes. When he finishes, Henry plays the results for him, Lu Han’s voice with Yixing’s behind it. “That’s it,” Henry says. “We got it.”  
  
  
  
  
  
_track 5_  
  
“I don’t want it if I have to move,” Lu Han says, face-down on Yixing’s carpeted floor after following him home from the studio. Yixing steps over him on his way to the kitchen.  
  
“Stay there and I’ll bring it to you,” he says, banging around as he fixes Lu Han some tea with honey for his throat. He cups the glass in both hands, takes a breath, and heads back into the living room. Lu Han makes an effort to become upright when he sees him, and accepts the tea with a thank you. Yixing sits with him against the foot of his worn-out couch. “Have you thought about what you’re going to do next?”  
  
“Kind of,” Lu Han says. “Jongin actually called me to talk about some ideas.”  
  
Jongin plays guitar for Summerteeth. “I thought we made a pact against exactly that,” Yixing says wryly.  
  
“You’re the one lending Kris to Baekhyun every other Thursday.”  
  
Yixing blows the hair out of his eyes and isn’t sure what to say next. Lu Han saves him by continuing: “Anyway, I think it could be fun. Less complicated. Every time I get behind a mic, I have to sing your songs like I know what the hell is going on inside your brain.”  
  
“As if Kris’ are any better. Or Zitao’s.”  
  
Kris’ lyrics are so personal and loaded that 75% of the time they’re impossible to understand. The few times Zitao has given songwriting a shot so far, the results have been aggressively unrestrained, one called Let’s Make Out which they liked to pull out during encores, where the hook was just Lu Han half-singing, half-screaming into the mic  _Let’s make out_  again and again.  
  
“No, but it’s different,” Lu Han says. He never composed, but he stayed up late with Yixing, kept him out of a music coma, told him what was good and what needed work. That was how Yixing recalled their first album, not the anxious day it dropped or the relief that followed but the string of three in the mornings when the two of them had identical bags under their eyes. Lu Han would say he couldn’t tell eighth and sixteenth notes apart anymore. Yixing would stop occasionally, as if he was building up some kind of courage, and this was the line that would be the right one.  
  
They sit there, watching whatever’s on TV, while Lu Han finishes his tea. Yixing listens to a disembodied voice talk to him about the codependency of wolf packs. Lu Han’s voice, deliberately neutral: “Why didn’t we ever hook up?”  
  
Yixing curls his tongue behind his teeth. If panic had a taste, this would be it.  
  
“It’s there, isn’t it?” Lu Han continues. “I’m not just making it up, it’s right there. So why didn’t we ever do anything about it?”  
  
“I didn’t know,” Yixing starts, doesn’t finish. He feels homesick in the worst way. “We were trying to get on our feet, and then once we got signed we had the album, and then the tour. There wasn’t a good time. I didn’t know,” he tries again, slowly, “if it was worth it.”  
  
“Sometimes you look at me like, I don’t know.” Lu Han studies his hands. “You can’t look at someone like that and not do anything.”  
  
“You didn’t do anything either.”  
  
“I’d freeze up,” Lu Han admits. “I think it was the songs. You were writing this stuff that was all about me, and I didn’t know how to sing it back to you. I spent the whole tour thinking this is so stupid, we shouldn’t be scared of each other.”  
  
Yixing doesn’t tell Lu Han that any way he sang would’ve been the right way. He wonders if that was the problem. Making Lu Han walk around carrying years of unacknowledged weight.  
  
Lu Han peers into his tea and asks, “Got anything stronger?”  
  
Yixing digs out a bottle of red wine and his Donnie Yen movies. They make it halfway through Ip Man before falling asleep together. He wakes up later on the couch with Lu Han lying next to him and taking the open side so that Yixing won’t fall off. Lu Han’s awake too. They’re face to face; it’s quiet. Yixing can see him in the drowsy darkness, biting the corner of his mouth, preparing to speak.  
  
“If it counts for anything,” Lu Han says, “I think it’d be worth it.”  
  
He breathes in cold air that comes out warm again when it hit Yixing’s cheek. Half-asleep, remembering being here before, Yixing finally asks, “Then why are you quitting?”  
  
“I guess I thought, if I could separate me from EXO, you wouldn’t have to choose between them.” Lu Han’s fingers are tangled in the front of Yixing’s shirt. The pull of it could drain an ocean, emptying Yixing out, the rescue service when the water level recedes to return everything to its place. “I thought this way, if you wanted to, you could choose both.”  
  
  
  
  
  
( _track 6_ )  
  
The second time he wakes up, it’s morning. Winter sunlight pours in from the open window, over the blanket tucked around him and mummifying him in warm wool. He can tell from the nonresistant dip of the couch that he’s the only one occupying it, but he doesn’t open his eyes yet. As sore as his neck and shoulders are, he tries not to move. He listens. In the kitchen, the refrigerator door opens, then closes. Running water from the sink. Cotton slippers against the tiled floor. The sound of Lu Han rummaging through the cupboards, starting the coffee pot, making himself at home. 


	6. i'm gonna be (baekhyun/tao)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> baekhyun and zitao hook up across asia.

  
  
  
“Did you find it?” Baekhyun asks, his back to the bed as he zips up his jeans. He hears the rustle of fabric and turns around before his shirt can hit him in the shoulder. Zitao has finished sitting up, the sheets snared around his ankles, his underwear kicked off ages ago. The Hong Kong skyline lays open behind his profile, turning him into one of its skyscrapers, crowned by gray-blue mist from the harbor. Baekhyun already isn’t a morning person, but right now all he wants to do is climb back under the covers and run his tongue over Zitao’s hipbones.  
  
Zitao’s Korean when he’s just woken up is total garbage but Baekhyun manages to make out the word  _Shower?_  He studies himself in the mirror, same clothes from yesterday. His hair styled itself into a pompadour overnight. “I should get going. Next time?”  
  
He lands a kiss on Zitao’s forehead with a playful smack. Zitao rubs at the wet spot after Baekhyun pulls back. “I’ll save you a seat at breakfast,” he says, more like a fact than a suggestion.  
  
“Cool,” Baekhyun says. “Wish me luck.”  
  
Zitao sleepily pumps his fist. "Fighting."  
  
Baekhyun’s hotel room is at the other end of the hallway. He still has that floaty well-fucked feeling running through his veins, and it makes him want to be careless and loud, show off the evidence. He’s early enough today to avoid bumping into anyone except Joonmyun, who glimpses him on his way to the elevator, clears his throat but says nothing.  
  
Inside the room, Kris is up and Chanyeol’s getting there, cocooned in his blankets, a bare leg slung over the edge of the mattress, reaching for the floor. Baekhyun heads for his luggage to dig out a change of clothes, wiggling out of the jeans he poured himself into less than five minutes ago. “Thanks for swapping with me,” he says.  
  
Kris nods as he collects his eye-mask and bag of toiletries under his arm. “No problem,” he says. “It’s too cold in here for you, right?”  
  
Kris’ tone is lenient. Baekhyun can feel his ears going pink. Yesterday when Kris opened the door, he’d aimed his best smile up at him and said, “I think the heating’s on the fritz in my room, and Chanyeol’s being annoying. Can we trade?”  
  
“Sure,” Kris replied, measured. Behind him, Zitao glanced up from his book, visibly brightened, and made a helpful handjob motion over Kris’ shoulder. “Don’t you want your toothbrush or anything?”  
  
“Right,” Baekhyun said, thrown for a second. “I’ll go back for my stuff later.”  
  
Once Kris left, Baekhyun knelt on the bed, pressed one palm over Zitao’s mouth and the other down the front of his sweats, and didn’t leave the room for the next six hours.  
  
  
  
  
  
Baekhyun isn’t the first guy in the world to fuck around with one of his friends. This is the sort of tradition that dates back centuries and civilizations. He can’t be the first guy to have to deal with his face being blown up on billboard posters either, though sometimes that’s what it feels like. Sometimes the only people touching him are their team of coordi and makeup noonas, the over-enthusiastic fans. He used to cling to the heat of Chanyeol using his shoulder for an armrest, Jongin coaching him through the choreography, helping him position his arms and legs. There was a guilt that came with jerking off in the shower to pieces and images of the people you live with, but it washed off under the spray. Left behind the lack of privacy, the days when he sympathized with zoo animals, the fact that he couldn’t date for the foreseeable future, and some things were so off-limits, SM didn’t even waste time warning them against it.  
  
  
  
  
  
He and Zitao started fooling around in Anaheim, their first time overseas and first opportunity at a venue that big. The pre-show adrenaline kicked in hours too early. Zitao wouldn’t stay still and Baekhyun was someone who fed off those kind of cues, good or bad. The secondhand anxiety amped him up a couple degrees too far. The backstage area was beginning to feel claustrophobic, so he reached for Zitao’s arm to--do something, settle him, take the edge off or whatever.  
  
Zitao jerked at the touch. He shifted his weight, stopped moving but didn’t actually relax. Baekhyun saw Zitao’s throat swallow, the tense line of his shoulders. He recognized it well enough in himself to recognize it in someone else. Zitao didn’t know how to wear it anywhere else but on the surface anyway.  
  
“You okay?” Baekhyun asked, pulling his hand away. Zitao’s upper body chased it for a brief moment, uninhibited until he caught himself.  
  
“Okay,” he repeated. “Thanks, hyung.”  
  
The buzz of conversation sped up around them, Sehun was weirdly excited about something, and SNSD’s dress rehearsal was coming up, but none of that was important in comparison. “I could help,” Baekhyun said. His heart banged against the window of his ribs. He had to be reading this right. “I mean, if you want.”  
  
Zitao looked at Baekhyun like he was making sure he was translating it correctly in his head, grasping all the nuances. Then he grinned, which Baekhyun hadn’t bargained on.  
  
At the next opportunity, Baekhyun grabbed Zitao’s hand, and Zitao followed without question. He elbowed Chanyeol as he walked past and mouthed, Cover for me. Chanyeol held up two fingers, meaning either  _Pay me back with two loads of laundry_  or  _Peace and victory for the handjobs you’re about to exchange_. They were still working out the details.  
  
He and Zitao ended up getting each other off in the middle of SNSD’s empty dressing room, because the girls had six songs to rehearse so it was the only place they could steal fifteen minutes. Zitao backed Baekhyun forcibly into the wall and Baekhyun tried his best not to wreck anything. They were on sacred ground. There had to be some high-end lotion stocked somewhere but the thought of using any of it made Baekhyun want to, like, join a convent, so instead he licked his palm and hoped Zitao was okay with a little friction. The sound Zitao made when Baekhyun wrapped his hand around his dick was low and hitched like this was all he’d been thinking about the entire day. Baekhyun loved being able to give people exactly what they needed.  
  
Zitao didn’t really know what he was doing, but he was hot for it and that was better. His breath came out in little gasps against Baekhyun’s neck as he pumped into Baekhyun’s fist. His dick felt big and hot and surreal in Baekhyun’s hand, like it was taking up too much room. There was no place for it except right against Baekhyun, with Zitao’s hips crushing him to the wall, and the heave of Zitao’s chest flattening the air out of his lungs. When Zitao reached down to help him out in exchange, Baekhyun pushed his hand away. It was hard enough to focus. Part of him wanted to give in to the growing desire to just rub off against Zitao’s thigh, fuck their stage clothes, it’d be an improvement anyway.  
  
Zitao looked put out for two seconds before his hand changed its trajectory and cupped Baekhyun’s face, directing him into a kiss, like saying  _You can’t deny me both_. It was so typical that Baekhyun had to kiss him back. Zitao didn’t use his height the way people like Chanyeol did; it was easy to forget how tall he was until you were standing right next to him, under the shadow of his body heat, inside the cage of it. Baekhyun could feel the head of Zitao’s cock sliding against his stomach, so easy with how wet Zitao was, driving harder against him until Baekhyun was panting into Zitao’s mouth.   
  
Zitao came a few minutes later, all over Baekhyun’s knuckles. His teeth dug into Baekhyun’s shoulder, a blunt pressure through the thick fabric of his jacket. Baekhyun was ready to wait him out, but then Zitao’s thigh was grinding up hard against his dick, and Baekhyun arched up, whined, scratched his nails down the back of Zitao’s neck from how good that felt.  
  
“Ow,” Zitao said, half hurt, half pleased. He reached for him again and this time Baekhyun didn’t stop him.   
  
  
  
  
  
They had to go on a condom run in Tokyo. “This is one of the top five most mortifying things I’ve ever done,” Baekhyun muttered, jamming his beanie further down his head.  
  
Zitao was wearing a scarf as a disguise, far too conspicuous in the sweltering August sun. “Maybe we shouldn’t have used up a box making balloons.”  
  
“Hah!” Baekhyun said. “I will never apologize for condom balloons.”  
  
There was a drugstore within walking distance. For help, Baekhyun’d enlisted Sehun, who owed him a favor, and Lu Han, who went along for the ride. The two of them left the hotel together, taking the fans in the lobby with them, and Baekhyun and Zitao snuck out in the opposite direction. When they arrived, Zitao went straight for the condoms before Baekhyun yanked him into another aisle. “Wait, slow down.”  
  
Zitao glanced around. He wasn’t great at being famous, didn’t know how to go about monitoring himself or dealing with the fact that the rest of the continent was monitoring him too. “What for?”  
  
“We should buy some other stuff too.” Baekhyun had dragged them into hair care. He picked out a silk flower clip at random to attach onto his beanie. “You know, to make it less obvious.”  
  
“It’ll still be obvious,” Zitao pointed out, but he was game. There were days Zitao joked around and smiled a lot and other days he kept his headphones on and wouldn’t engage with anyone. Either way, Baekhyun could suggest,  _I need a new shirt,_  or _When was the last time we went swimming?_  or  _Guess what, we’re out of condoms,_  and Zitao’d always look at him without hesitation and say,  _I’ll come._  
  
Baekhyun slipped past pregnancy tests and flu medication, found what they came for, and spent the next ten minutes filling their basket with rubbing alcohol, band-aids, gummy bear vitamins for kids that he could pawn off on Sehun later. Zitao disappeared and returned to contribute lip balm and a bizarre duck-shaped chew toy, which Baekhyun figured could also go to Sehun.   
  
He peered into their shopping basket. “See? Now people can’t tell.”   
  
“Maybe we have strange sex,” Zitao said.  
  
Baekhyun started laughing and couldn’t stop. Zitao’s scarf covered his mouth but his eyes crinkled when he grinned back. They wasted another five minutes in cosmetics, where Baekhyun spritzed the inside of his wrist with every available fragrance tester. Zitao gripped his forearm, brought it up to his face, then wrinkled his nose. He sneezed, twice. Baekhyun didn’t kiss him in the middle of a drugstore. His fingers curled into the center of his palm instead.  
  
In the midst of everything, he stole the hair clip by accident, and discovered it only once they were back in the hotel elevator and he saw his reflection in the door. “Huh,” he said. “That could’ve gone worse.”   
  
Zitao quacked the duck in Baekhyun’s face. It’d be given to Monggu later, though Sehun accepted the toddler vitamins with a reluctant glare. Kyungsoo stashed the band-aids in his bag, unimpressed with their Hello Kitty design. Baekhyun kept the lip balm--it was coconut-flavored and made him want to kiss himself. He lost track of the flower until a month later when he saw it in Zitao’s dorm room in Seoul, placed on the nightstand long enough for a film of dust to gather around it, while the wood beneath the petals stayed clean.  
  
  
  
  
  
By Jakarta they’d learned better, no more ruining their styled hair and outfits, ransacking SNSD’s makeup station for tissues, running out of condoms. They stuck to hotels, off-hours. Baekhyun got pretty decent at giving head. He liked when Zitao played with his hair, tugged on it a little, just to let Baekhyun know where he wanted him. Sometimes he’d ask Zitao to do more than a little, to fuck shallowly into Baekhyun’s offered mouth until soon enough he stopped being too polite to take what he needed. Baekhyun’s eyes watered. The heavy fullness on his tongue, the dull ache in his jaw, warmed him all over. It was the only reason he had to be grateful that the next day all anyone’d ask him to do was lipsync.  
  
Other times he’d tell Zitao to keep his hands behind his back, and Zitao would do it, he’d do whatever Baekhyun said, and that was fun too.  
  
Other times all Zitao seemed to want was to make out until Baekhyun’s lips felt swollen and his brain felt like it’d evaporated.  
  
Most times Zitao wasn’t even around, which was when Baekhyun had to start thinking about what they were doing. “Don’t do it, Baekhyun,” Chanyeol said when he saw the look on his face. “Don’t give in. Don’t think.”  
  
“I can’t help it.” Baekhyun tucked himself against Chanyeol’s arm. “I’m a thinker.”  
  
“Is it opposite day,” Sehun piped up. Baekhyun kicked the back of his seat.   
  
EXO-M was out in L.A.. He weighed the option of pulling out his phone and shooting Zitao a message just to say hi, but that was how problems began. Problems like Baekhyun mixing up his priorities. Like Baekhyun feeling too tender, hung up on moments as small as drinking from the same water bottle, their fingerprints superimposed in the condensation. Baekhyun getting the crazy itch to jump on a plane, fly the stupid thing himself, for the chance to fall asleep next to Zitao on a Thursday night. He hadn’t forgotten that missing someone half the time, then having to tiptoe his way around the other half, didn’t sound romantic, it sounded shitty. But he wondered how long they could keep this up, before he was shielding his eyes from the sun and tracking every trail of white exhaust he came across.   
  
  
  
  
  
Bangkok came piggybacked right after Singapore and by the end of it Zitao was wiped out. That time he was the one who came to find Baekhyun. Zitao never prepared a cover story. He showed up in the doorway, his hand in his hair pushing back his bangs, and told Chanyeol bluntly, “I need to talk to Baekhyun-hyung, please.” Chanyeol called out that he was going to bug Kyungsoo instead, be back in an hour, and Zitao was collapsed face-first in Baekhyun’s bed before the door finished closing.  
  
“I want to sleep for a million years.”  
  
“Me too,” Baekhyun said. It was their last SMTown for now. After that, they’d be down to award shows, events, and rare promotions as a full set. He’d kind of wanted to do something to commemorate, at the very least he’d wanted to make out, but it was hard to feel let down. A fog settled over his whole body. He turned the TV on for some background noise, dimmed the bed lamps, then sat on his knees and placed a hand against the small of Zitao’s back.  
  
Zitao lifted his face out of the pillow. “Do you want--?”  
  
“Just relax,” Baekhyun said. He shifted closer, straddling the back of Zitao’s thighs, and added, “Sleeping Beauty.”  
  
Zitao made a monosyllabic noise, but sometimes Baekhyun just needed to talk. He got to work, gliding both hands under Zitao’s shirt, from his waist to his shoulders, outlining the contours of his back. The pressure had Zitao melting under him as his body pushed through the pain. Baekhyun kneaded and smoothed out the tension until Zitao let out a wordless groan.  
  
“That’s it,” Baekhyun encouraged. He spent extra time on Zitao’s shoulderblades, rubbing his palms in circles, working over flesh and muscle, discovering the places he could press down to make Zitao arch against the mattress. Behind him, the TV played the same three music videos over and over to the point where Baekhyun could hum along. It was dark outside. The only light through the balcony came from the surrounding tower blocks, the orange glow of traffic below. Baekhyun was still tired but it’d become a different kind of tired, calmer, uncomplicated, like lying in bed and knowing the last thing he wanted to see before he closed his eyes. He tried to remember how long ago Chanyeol had left and how long they had before he came back. Zitao’s skin was distractingly warm.  
  
His hands traveled down to Zitao’s lower back, fanning out from his spine. Zitao’s ass was right there, so he copped a feel.  
  
Zitao laughed, muffled. Baekhyun climbed off and into the space next to him. “Are you asleep yet?”  
  
“Almost,” Zitao said.  
  
“You can sleep,” Baekhyun said. “That’d be okay.”  
  
He took Zitao’s hand, the one closest to him, and massaged that too, squeezing around his thumb, stretching it gently away from his palm.  
  
“You sleep too,” Zitao mumbled. “You worked hard.”  
  
“I need to be around to wake you up,” Baekhyun said.  
  
“Why do I have to be the princess?”  
  
Baekhyun grinned. “Cause my kisses rock your world.”  
  
He moved on to the rest of Zitao’s hand. Rubbed over each knuckle, the spaces between his fingers. By the time he returned to Zitao’s palm, pressing into it and loosening it with his thumb, Zitao had drifted off. Baekhyun checked the time. Thirty minutes wasn’t enough for him to follow suit, but he braided Zitao’s hair, and searched up the name of the new Thai pop song looping through his head, and beat all of Zitao’s high scores on his phone. Then, feeling accomplished, as if nothing better existed that he could’ve been doing, he walked his fingers up the ladder of Zitao’s spine and waited.  
  
  
  
  
  
Last night, after Zitao came, he went pliant against the headboard and said, “I really like you.”  
  
Baekhyun wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist, self-satisfied. “Yeah, I figured,” he said, pillowing his chin on Zitao’s stomach, which was soft and toned and inviting.  
  
“I mean,” Zitao said, still breathless, “I really, really like you.”  
  
Baekhyun should’ve been ready. He sucked on the inside of his cheek and looked at the bare expectancy on Zitao’s face and didn’t know what to do. “Thanks,” he tried.  
  
Zitao barreled forward. “It doesn’t have to change anything. I just wanted you to know.”  
  
Baekhyun sat up, inserting some distance between himself and Zitao’s dick. “You wouldn’t be telling me if you didn’t want it to change something.”  
  
That could’ve come out better, less of an accusation. He wanted to rewind and do it over, but Zitao was already reacting, twisting the sheets around his hand. “Well, I do,” he said. “I want to see you more and hang out with you more and do all of it more.”  
  
A feeling spiked in Baekhyun’s chest, kind of like he was sick, except this was the other thing. The huge, risky, you’re in trouble now Byun Baekhyun thing.  
  
“That’s not just up to you and me.”  
  
Zitao was trying to arrange the words together to express himself, and he had to make a few false starts before settling on: “You and me is the important part.” He added, “You like me too,” daring Baekhyun to deny it.  
  
“I like you too,” Baekhyun said slowly, because that was true, if simplified. It wasn’t enough to just like someone these days. There was a reason their hook-ups didn’t happen in Seoul. If Baekhyun brought Zitao home, he was going to want him to stay there. Already it felt impossible sometimes: he couldn’t think of any city in the East Asia region without the urge to reach for his phone. Couldn’t disassociate Zitao from the most basic lip balm or the idea of beaches. It’d taken two months before he stopped blushing around Taeyeon-noona for all the wrong reasons. None of that was getting easier.  
  
“Can you give me some time to think about it?” Baekhyun finally said.  
  
It wasn’t the answer Zitao had been looking for, Baekhyun knew. But he looked less hurt, which was a start.  
  
“Okay,” he said. Then he asked, “Does some time mean a few days or a week?”  
  
Baekhyun scooted in again. “A few days, tops.”  
  
Zitao seemed suddenly self-conscious, after what amounted to an unprepared confession. “Sorry I messed up the,” he trailed off, probably searching for  _sex mood_.  
  
This part was familiar territory, easier to handle. Baekhyun leaned back over Zitao’s legs and said, “Nah, don’t underestimate me.”   
  
  
  
  
  
After Baekhyun finishes showering, he and Chanyeol make their way down to breakfast together. Chanyeol’s no longer groggy and uncommunicative, but there’s a stubborn crease in his cheek from his pillowcase. “Enjoy your hanky panky?” he asks.  
  
“Enjoy your right hand?” Baekhyun shoots back.  
  
Chanyeol puts on his behaved idol face. “What right hand?” he says, wide-eyed. “What’s sex?”  
  
Most of the band and staff is situated. As promised, Zitao has saved a spot for Baekhyun next to him, marked by the jacket hanging over the back of the chair. Baekhyun slips into the open seat and exchanges the standard good mornings. Zitao glances at him, then pretends not to.  
  
Yixing nudges Zitao from the left and says, “You didn’t sleep well?”  
  
Zitao stops trying to incinerate the tablecloth with his eyes. “It wasn’t very restful.”  
  
Across from them, Chanyeol snorts into his teacup. Baekhyun stomps on his foot.  
  
Zitao pretends not to look at him three more times before Baekhyun decides, Screw it, and takes Zitao’s hand under the table. Zitao goes rigid next to him, then relaxes all at once. When Zitao’s thumb strokes along the side of Baekhyun’s palm, it’s so startlingly intimate that Baekhyun’s heart tries to fight its way out of him. There’s a gulf of warmth inside of him that he doesn’t know how to harbor anymore. He recalls a cramped backstage, Zitao, nervous and kind of horny, needing to be dug out of his own head. Zitao following his lead, but being the one to go in for the first kiss. Baekhyun himself, running out of reasons to say no.  
  
“It’s just a dumpling,” Chanyeol says.  
  
Baekhyun jumps. “What?”  
  
“You’re looking at it like it’s a calculus problem,” Chanyeol says, waving his chopsticks at Baekhyun’s plate. “It’s just a dumpling.”  
  
“ _You’re_  just a dumpling,” he says.  
  
Yixing interrupts, “Taozi, why are you eating with your left hand?”  
  
Baekhyun shifts in his chair and starts to pull back, but Zitao’s grip only tightens. “I’m training myself to become ambidextrous,” he says, and goes on stabbing a turnip cake in half with his chopsticks. Yixing makes an amicable sound, like that’s normal. Baekhyun laughs, he can’t help it. If the point of controlling this thing with Zitao, of isolating it to one place like a tourniquet, is so he can manage the extent of what he wants, he’s doing a lousy job of it. He thinks about how they’re practically dating anyway, how he can’t spend all this effort marking aside boxes labeled Huang Zitao when all they’ve done is stack up higher and push against the door. Blood flows whether you want it to or not, and Zitao makes him miss places he’s never stayed more than three days in. Zitao makes him fucking  _shoplift_.  
  
Baekhyun watches as Zitao grapples his food into submission while never making a single move to let go of Baekhyun’s hand. He thinks, This us-against-the-world attitude is gonna get you in trouble.  
  
He thinks, Shit, I’m really into you.  
  
“Try this, hyung,” Zitao says, slipping a vermicelli roll onto his plate with minimal coordination.   
  
It’s useless doing anything in half-measures. Baekhyun picks it up and takes a big bite.  
  
  
  
  
  
When it’s time to leave, he convinces Jongdae to trade places, and ducks into EXO-M’s van as Kris greets him with a straight face, “You got even cuter, Chen Chen.” Baekhyun beams at him and squeezes into the middle row. Zitao, halfway zoned out, removes his earbuds when he sees him.  
  
“Hi,” he says, surprised.  
  
“Hey,” says Baekhyun.  
  
Minseok is the last one to board, sliding the door shut after himself before he notices Baekhyun. “Whoa, Jongdae,” he says. “You look different.”  
  
Zitao dangles an earbud in front of Baekhyun until he takes it. “You can choose, Jongdae-hyung,” he says. Baekhyun crowds closer to give Minseok more room, and scrolls through Zitao’s mp3 player, browsing past a couple artists he recognizes and way more that he doesn’t.  
  
The van rolls into motion, and the noisy rumble of the engine gives Baekhyun the chance to say, “I finished thinking about it.” He shrugs, “It wasn’t as hard as I thought.”  
  
Zitao takes a second to parse that, and then he’s grinning. It’s infectious. Baekhyun wants to bottle and keep it, pour it over the knowledge that there are parts that are going to suck, he’s signing up for his phone bills to skyrocket, for lessons on how to sneak around and become a better liar, for separation to hit him five times harder than when all they did was sleep with each other once in a while. But Zitao takes him through one of his playlists, the song titles paired with their clumsy translations. Baekhyun chooses some Taiwanese alt-rock song just because the name sounds good when Zitao says it. It’s a half hour drive to the airport. Baekhyun hooks an ankle slyly around Zitao’s. Tomorrow they’ll talk about the details, but today he’s playing as much footsie as he wants. For the rest of the ride he listens to a guy singing to him in a language he doesn’t understand, which, he guesses, is one of the best markers of home that he has these days.


	7. make 'em cowboys swoon (chanyeol/kris)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> chanyeol starts a prank war and kris finishes it.

  
  
  
Chanyeol doesn’t mean to fire the starter pistol for a continental prank war, it just kind of happens. “Oops,” he says, tossing a bottle of expensive face lotion back and forth in his hands. Their better half is already en route back to China.  
  
Baekhyun leans forward on his bed. “Isn’t that--?”  
  
“I forgot to give it back,” Chanyeol explains. He forgot to let Kris know he was borrowing it, too.  
  
Baekhyun scrunches his mouth, deliberating. “Okay, well,” he says. “Make sure in your will that it says your SPX sneakers go to best friend Byun Baekhyun.”  
  
“Who, fun-sized toddler feet Byun Baekhyun?” Chanyeol dodges the projectile pillow. “It’s no big deal. Who’d hold a grudge against this face?”  
  
He doesn’t hear from Kris, but there’s an e-mail from Jongdae in his inbox the next morning, five sinister paragraphs of ㅋㅋㅋ repeated over and over. “It’s no big deal,” Baekhyun parrots as he reads over Chanyeol’s shoulder. Chanyeol reaches back with honed accuracy to smush his hand into Baekhyun’s face. There’s no way Kris is actually angry about this. Chanyeol shoots him a message anyway,  _sorry!_  followed by a selca of himself making the most apologetic face he knows how. He gets a response a few hours later:  
  
(✿◠‿◠)  
  
“Oops,” he says.  
  
“I want your Bathing Ape hoodie too,” Baekhyun whispers.  
  
  
  
  
  
The next time everyone’s together, it’s three weeks later in Taiwan for some joint promotional activities. EXO-K arrives first, straight from Seoul, and they hang around the baggage claim area wasting half an hour until EXO-M’s plane lands. Chanyeol spends that time winning at thumb-wrestling. “Why don’t we ever play the stuff I’m good at?” Kyungsoo asks as he shakes out his wrist.  
  
“There’s no such thing as competitive hand-holding,” Chanyeol says.  
  
“Just wait,” Kyungsoo says, elbowing him. “You’re going to find a girlfriend and suck at holding hands and your palms will get sweaty too fast all the time.”  
  
“I’m great at holding hands!” Chanyeol says. “Sehun, get over here, I’m gonna hold the fuck out of your hand--”  
  
Sehun is the first one on his feet when EXO-M starts to file out from immigration, making his escape towards Lu Han, who’s busy mistaking a bathroom for the customs checkpoint. They continue as a group towards the arrival hall, where the mob of reporters and fans have been waiting.  
  
Kris readily slings an arm over Chanyeol’s shoulders. Up ahead, Jongin and Zitao walk under the same dark cloud. Yixing pulls a squirming Baekhyun closer by the neck so they can play out their weird ongoing ritual that anthropologists would have a field day with. You learn to put friendships on hold, pick up again where you left off. Kris is a little more starved for sleep than the last time they saw each other, but otherwise he always comes back over-styled for airports and giving off heat like a radiator.  
  
“You went darker,” Kris notices. Chanyeol feels Kris’ hand at the base of his skull, carding through his dyed hair.  
  
“Oh, yeah,” Chanyeol says. “You like it?”  
  
Kris gives it a soft tug and says, “It looks good.”  
  
  
  
  
  
Once they check in at the hotel, Baekhyun runs off with Zitao and Jongdae vanishes to, like, commit well-intentioned arson. With both of them gone, Chanyeol makes himself at home on Kris’ bed, pouring through the fan gifts Kris was allowed to keep, half of which are expensive pairs of underwear. “They’re trying to tell you something,” he says.  
  
Kris waves it off. “Jongin has that covered.”  
  
“You’re older than him,” Chanyeol says. “Take responsibility, hyung. Show off your S-line.”  
  
“Fuck off,” Kris laughs. He rolls onto his forearms, and his shirt hikes up. “You know, if you like any of these, you can have them.”  
  
“Really?” Chanyeol reaches for the black cotton Calvin Klein, and inspects that instead of the sliver of Kris’ back, exposed and bright in the hotel light. “Thanks.”  
  
“Sure,” Kris says. He chooses another pair, this time pink with an Angry Bird flying across the front. “Here, from me to you.”  
  
They hang out until Joonmyun comes by later to call them down to the hotel lobby for dinner. With the winter weather kicking in, they all finally agree to go out for hot pot together, and split into two tables at the restaurant. Chanyeol gets sandwiched between Jongdae, who misleads him on how much chili paste to add to his dipping sauce, and Kris, who spends the whole time rescuing fish cakes and taro root and thin slices of lamb from the broth to place into Chanyeol’s bowl, as Chanyeol fans his mouth and stubbornly doesn’t tear up.  
  
Nothing else happens until the next week, after the interviews and shows, as EXO-K is preparing to leave Taipei. Chanyeol wakes up before Baekhyun so he can grab the first shower. He washes up and gets dressed just as Baekhyun is dragging himself out of bed. “Morning,” he says, shimmying his jeans over his thighs. “Can I dry my hair real quick before you get started?”  
  
Baekhyun sends him a thumbs-up, says, “Cute undies,” and flops backwards. Chanyeol walks back into the bathroom. He combs his fingers through a few tangles and takes the blow dryer off the wall and turns it on. He is, all of a sudden, at the center of a tornado of baby powder.  
  
  
  
  
  
_sorry,_  Kris’ text reads, with a selca of him doing aegyo.  
  
_buing buing asshole_ , Chanyeol shoots back, before a stewardess asks him to turn off his phone for take-off. In the seat next to him, Kyungsoo leans closer, looking puzzled. Slowly, he says, “You smell like an angel.”  
  
“Thank you,” Chanyeol says.  
  
  
  
  
  
Chanyeol kind of has a thing for Kris. It isn’t an earth-shattering thing; he could extinguish it if he needed to. But he hasn’t needed to, so far. He likes the anticipation when they’re around each other, how Kris’ attention makes his stomach fizzle like a bottle of champagne. On the days he's allowed to have more than five minutes in the shower, he likes the idea of Kris' huge hands on the back of his thighs, wrapped around his dick. Kris’ voice, the smile that Chanyeol wants to jump inside and live in, the way he keeps Chanyeol on his feet, the everyday things. Kris makes it easy to like him. That doesn’t mean Chanyeol isn’t going to play.  
  
“C’mon,” he cajoles over the phone. “You owe me. I know you’re the one who did all the dirty work with the blow dryer.”  
  
“Then you know I already picked teams,” Jongdae singsongs back at him.  
  
“You can be my double agent.”  
  
“Going from Kris-hyung to you would be a demotion.”  
  
“Okay, you know what,” Chanyeol says, “don't worry about it, I can find someone else. Lu Han-hyung would want in, right? He’s trickier than you.”  
  
“You can’t use reverse psychology on me,” Jongdae says. “I already know I’m the trickiest.”  
  
“You  _could_  try Lu Han-hyung,” Baekhyun pipes up afterwards from his place at the foot of the couch. On the TV, the new episode of their variety show starts to air, so Baekhyun yells into the hallway for everyone to haul their asses into the living room. He holds out his contraband box of strawberry Pepero to let Chanyeol steal a few before the vultures descend.  
  
“Nah, his allegiance is obvious,” Chanyeol says, biting a Pepero stick in half. He sticks out his bottom lip and leans forward off the couch to rest his cheek against the crown of Baekhyun’s head. “All of their allegiances are obvious. What should I do?”  
  
“Ask not what you can do, but what Byun Baekhyun can do for you,” Baekhyun says, already fishing his phone out of his jeans.  
  
  
  
  
  
The way Chanyeol hears it, Zitao douses Kris’ entire drawer of shirts with rainbow glitter. One load of laundry, three showers and two days later, Kris still can’t fucking get rid of it. He sparkles his way from Beijing to Wuhan. Someone on the internet remixes the airport fancams with clips from Twilight. Chanyeol is pretty confident that he’s winning.  
  
That same week, a clip of Chanyeol in a cheerleading uniform from a bet he made three years ago hits Naver. It dominates search engine rankings for days.  
  
“I can’t tell,” Jongin wheezes, looping the twenty second video again, “if I’m really happy, or really sad.”  
  
“I’m sad,” Joonmyun says, as seventeen-year-old Chanyeol shakes his pom poms and kicks a smooth leg into the air.  
  
  
  
  
  
They do this for the rest of the month. With some help from Google translate, Chanyeol relays instructions to Zitao on how to salt Kris’ toothbrush or rig Kris’ room with water balloons or max out Kris’ harddrive with Japanese fetish porn. When Kris runs out of old pictures of Chanyeol to leak, he convinces Lu Han to convince Sehun, who pulls off the feather and shaving cream trick on Chanyeol three mornings in a row. “You have no imagination,” Chanyeol says to Kris’ face on his laptop screen.  
  
“I’m a student of the classics,” Kris says. He has his bangs pinned up in preparation for his nightly routine. “Give me a second, I’ll be back.”  
  
Chanyeol watches as Kris rises from his bed and disappears from the frame. When he returns a minute later, he’s wearing just boxers, pulling on a loose tank to sleep in. Chanyeol takes the opportunity to absorb Kris’ collarbones, the glimpse of the tattoo on Kris’ upper arm, before Kris sits back down with a collection of skincare products. “So how’s China?” he asks.  
  
Kris begins smoothing a cotton pad across his skin. “Same as always. How’s your end?”  
  
“We’re covering H.O.T. on SBS this weekend,” Chanyeol says. He stretches out on his stomach until he’s comfortable and the webcam gets a view down his shirt. Fair’s fair. “It’s a whole boyband rite of passage. Picture me doing ‘90s retro boyish charm but with modern updated animal ears.”  
  
“So on a scale from one to cheerleader,” Kris says.  
  
“Go, fight, win,” Chanyeol claps with enthusiasm, “Kris-hyung is a dick.”  
  
Kris grins ruefully. “Did the video overstep things a little?”  
  
“No,” Chanyeol says, “it’s okay. I just didn’t know you kept the copy.”  
  
“Why wouldn’t I?” Kris says, glancing up from his moisturizer, and Chanyeol’s heart rate kicks up without meaning to.  
  
Eventually Joonmyun gives him a one-minute warning through the bedroom door, so Chanyeol says, “I gotta go, filming starts early tomorrow.”  
  
“Work hard,” Kris says. “I’ll see you soon.”  
  
Chanyeol throws him a salute, and waits until Kris ends the call first. He’s good at phasing people in and out by now, but Kris is one of those where it’s just better when he’s around. Chanyeol’s better. When Kris is gone, Chanyeol does shit like steal lotion and plan glitter bombs, trying to get a handle on absence, reach across nine hundred kilometers and leave a mark.   
  
  
  
  
  
Since Baekhyun is the best friend Chanyeol could want, he doesn’t ask questions when Chanyeol tosses him a beanie and tells him to wear dark colors and meet at EXO-M’s dorm in ten minutes. Instead, he dresses up, draws on a bandit mask with black eyeshadow, and is carrying his own backpack of supplies when Chanyeol arrives. “I brought rope and duct tape,” Baekhyun says as Chanyeol punches in the door code. “I didn’t know how much we’d need.”  
  
“We’re not gonna do anything that suspicious,” Chanyeol says, though part of him is happier now to have the option.  
  
EXO-M is back in town the next day. Kris shows up to dance practice stonily with pink highlights in his hair. Unexpectedly, the rest of his sub-unit matches him. Baekhyun shrugs and says, “I saw an opportunity and went for it.”  
  
When the twelve of them are together, Jongin plays bad cop (“what’s so hard about staying in sync, I like you guys but I am ten seconds away from amputating everyone’s feet”) and Yixing plays good cop (“let’s do it again, but this time feel the music in your soul of souls”). At the end of the first two hours, Chanyeol sits in front of the studio mirror, legs thrown out, eyes shut, and tries to convince his body that it’s still human and ready to go again. Dancing will never be his favorite part of the job.  
  
Something cold presses against his forehead through his sweaty hair. Chanyeol peeks an eye open at Kris. “You’re a dream come true.”  
  
“Call me hyung.”  
  
Kris crouches down beside him. Up close, the pink in his hair is even more neon. Chanyeol accepts the water bottle and swallows a huge mouthful before he says, “Please take better care of your image, hyung.”  
  
Kris looks as if he wants to stick out his tongue, but doesn’t. “The dye better be temporary.”  
  
“Memories are eternal,” Chanyeol lilts. He’s feeling impulsive today, for no reason other than the difference between having a goal flying somewhere across a body of water, and having it right next to you. With his free hand, he pulls Kris’ closer. His own palm is overheated and damp with sweat, but their fingers link with little effort. “Besides how much I want to pass out right now,” he says, “it’s nice having you guys back.”  
  
Kris lets their hands swing in the air between them. “It’s nice being back,” he says.  
  
  
  
  
  
When Chanyeol steps out of the shower, his clothes are gone and so is his towel. He peers out of the bathroom, dripping, just in time to see Jongdae dash out the door, two full laundry bags thrown over his shoulder.  
  
“Are you really doing this to me,” Chanyeol yells after him.  
  
Jongdae has managed to clear the room of anything Chanyeol could cover up with, including all of his underwear. Kyungsoo lets him borrow a clean towel, and then he’s braving the route to EXO-M’s neighboring dorm, wet and naked, feeling foolish. Kris answers the door. “You should take better care of your image,” he greets.  
  
Chanyeol braces his hand against the doorframe. “You’re not cute,” he accuses.  
  
“I’m kind of cute,” Kris says.  
  
Behind him, Chanyeol can see Minseok and Lu Han coming over to spectate. Minseok bites into an apple and wiggles his fingers hello. Lu Han’s eyes sweep down and back up. Chanyeol fights the itch of self-consciousness but ends up blushing anyway.  
  
Kris’ smile goes soft. “We’re watching a movie. You wanna stick around?”  
  
Chanyeol sticks around. “There were easier ways to ask me over,” he says as he fills the couch space next to Jongdae so he can sock him in the arm. “Where’s my stuff?”  
  
“I stashed everything on the roof,” Jongdae says with an air of accomplishment.  
  
Zitao says something to Kris, then has to remember to repeat himself in Korean. “Just give him something to borrow.”  
  
“No, I’m okay like this,” Chanyeol says. He makes a move to open his towel, because if he’s naked he may as well have fun with it, and is rewarded when Jongdae says, “ _Augh_ ,” and scurries away.  
  
Kris returns and tosses some of his own clothes at Chanyeol, a threadbare shirt and a clean pair of boxers. When Chanyeol finishes changing in the bathroom, Kris is sitting where Jongdae just evacuated, while Jongdae uses Yixing’s lap for a pillow, a bowl of popcorn resting on his chest. Chanyeol scoops up a handful and slides in next to Kris. They’re watching a horror movie Chanyeol has seen before, so he knows during exactly which parts to grab Kris’ arm and make him jump. After the third time, Kris tries to restrain Chanyeol’s hands. Chanyeol twists around and blows into Kris’ ear.  
  
“Please shut up,” Zitao enunciates clearly from the floor, eyes fixed on the TV as Lu Han feeds him popcorn.  
  
The next time Chanyeol spooks him, Kris hits him on the thigh, and keeps his hand there.  
  
  
  
  
  
Two days later, Kris wakes up from his nap in the middle of Chanyeol’s retaliation.  
  
“Oh shit,” Chanyeol laughs. “Uh.”  
  
Neither of them has been present for the full fallout of a prank before, without the buffer of separate countries or third parties. Chanyeol’s brain suggests  _Run_  but only half of his body gets the message, so all he does is jerk back onto the balls of his feet. Kris reaches up as he rises onto an elbow, finds the cheerleading ribbon streaming in his hair, and says, “You’re kidding,” his voice low with sleep. It’s, fuck, kind of hot. Chanyeol rocks forward when his weight gives out, kneeling back over Kris’ calves.  
  
They’re quiet for a while, Kris looking so serious with his hair done up like a high school girl’s, Chanyeol pretending that it isn’t funny and that he doesn’t have the rest of the cheerleader outfit and accessories in a dufflebag at the foot of the bed.  
  
"Lu Han-hyung let me in," he finally says.  
  
“I’m kicking him out of my group,” Kris says. “Is Baekhyun’s Chinese any good these days?”  
  
“You’re picking Baekhyun over me?” Chanyeol says.  
  
“No," Kris says, in a resigned tone. “I’m picking Baekhyun over Lu Han.”  
  
“Baekhyun is more trouble.”  
  
“You’re not listening to what I’m saying,” Kris says. He gives up trying to undo the ribbon and cups his palms around Chanyeol’s hips instead. His eyes are dark under the window’s evening light. His legs under Chanyeol’s are as molten as the rest of him. Something’s going to happen, Chanyeol can feel it. He set this in motion months ago, coming up to the precipice, waiting for the certainty that he feels right now. This time when his brain tells him  _Go_ , his body moves to follow through.  
  
Kris gets there first.  
  
Yeah, okay, Chanyeol thinks. Kris slides his mouth against Chanyeol’s, brief at first, like he’s learning how, before he’s gunning it, a little dirty, with his hand on Chanyeol’s jaw. Chanyeol should’ve given this part more thought, Kris who was building a bridge at the same time he was. For five seconds he loses track and just lets it happen, sinking down into Kris like it’s the natural order of things.   
  
Kris finds some leverage in the middle of everything and gets a firm hold around Chanyeol’s waist to flip them over, the two of them going down like a single unstoppable force. Chanyeol’s back hits the narrow mattress and his shoulder catches against the wall by accident and he gasps, “Motherfucker,” against Kris’ lips while Kris kind of laughs and says, “Sorry.” The pain turns into heat, traveling from Chanyeol’s shoulder to the pit of his stomach. He digs his fingers into the back of Kris’ neck and pushes up against him, Kris’ mouth impossibly wet and hot as Chanyeol licks into it and sucks on Kris’ bottom lip. Kris makes this incredible rough, stunned noise and hearing it thrills Chanyeol, makes the satisfaction fire through his blood, the way seeing Kris’ hair in neon pink did, all the pictures of him covered in glitter. Getting to say, That was me. This is me, too.  
  
There are, approximately, a million things Chanyeol wants to do to Kris, but for now making out is perfect. He doesn’t know if kissing always felt this good or what. He moves clutches Kris’ hair, pulling, which Kris seems to like, his hips shoved down into Chanyeol’s even as he resists being guided. Chanyeol relaxes his fist to find a better grip, only to rediscover the cool, smooth line of ribbon still attached to Kris’ hair.   
  
He starts to laugh. Kris pulls away and stares down at him, eyes narrowed and mouth red. “What?” he asks.  
  
“Nothing, here, I’ll--”  
  
Chanyeol uses both hands and works on loosening the knot of the bow as Kris keeps looking at him, both patience and provocation, one of the only expressions that he doesn’t have a good read on yet, one more door to kick down. After another minute, he manages to tug the ribbon free, and folds it into Kris’ palm.  
  
“I guess you owe me one,” he says.  
  
Kris shifts all his weight onto one arm, and reaches his other hand up. “Let’s call it even,” he says, and wraps the ribbon into Chanyeol’s hair.


	8. hey now, hey now (lay/lu han)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> exo goes on tour and lu han gravitates back towards yixing.

  
  
By the time their first Asia-wide tour is announced, it's been a month since he and Yixing broke it off. It feels dishonest, to think of it that way. Lu Han didn't break anything so much as he placed it all in limbo: sleeping in Yixing's bed, their pattern of drowsy, unhurried blowjobs in the shower when they had the chance. He and Yixing still work together, live together, talk and eat and travel from place to place together. When their manager hands out their passports, Yixing is right there, stretching over Lu Han's shoulder to take his boarding pass. "13C," he reads out.  
  
Lu Han glances down at his own. "14A. Window seat. Someone switch with me?"  
  
"I'm 13B," Zitao offers.  
  
Kris, who's seated in 13A, sighs. "Does anyone want to switch with me too?"  
  
Minseok makes a decisive X with his arms. Jongdae pretends not to understand even after Kris repeats himself in Korean.   
  
At the airport, Lu Han ends up squeezed behind Kris, a few steps in front of Yixing, Minseok originally next to him until the swell of the crowd cut him off. He floats through the blue terminal signs, the crawl of flight numbers and destinations, Kris' endless back under a white button-down shirt that magnifies every hint of his bad posture. On a whim, he places his palm between Kris' shoulderblades, the way his mother used to do with him, and presses down. He's surprised when Kris reacts to it, standing taller, like Lu Han's ironing his spine straight. Then Kris seems to realize what just happened. He reaches back, as if reaching into his reservoir of tolerance, and nudges Lu Han's hand away. Very deliberately, the slouch returns to his shoulders.  
  
Lu Han tries not to snicker. He feels Yixing catch up and fall into place beside him.  
  
"Did you just snake charm Kris?" Yixing says.  
  
"I didn't  _not_  just snake charm Kris," Lu Han says. Yixing grins back conspiratorially. As usual, the sight of it reattaches some part of Lu Han back to the ground.  
  
They sieve through the flashing cameras, their names being called. Yixing gets held up at security, having forgotten about the water bottle lost at the bottom of his MCM bag. Lu Han hangs back to wait for him. They sit together on the plane. There are small things he's done so many times that his body understands them the way it implicitly understands balance, singing from the diaphragm, walking forward. A week after they ended it, Lu Han would still meet Yixing's eyes and start to lean in, half-expecting a kiss.  
  
  
  
  
  
The first leg of their concert tour is South Korea, three nights back to back at the Olympic Gymnastics Arena. From there, eight more shows over a span of nine months. Two EPs and one full album is enough material for three sets and an encore. The preparation is manic, draining. Lu Han comes home day after day feeling like his entire being has been cycled through a washer, eroded to the bone, everything excess scrubbed away. He's on autopilot when he runs into Yixing freshly showered, the bathroom door left wide open to air out the steam. Yixing makes an aborted effort to move aside, but neither of them knows if they should go left or right, so they stand at a stalemate in the middle of the hallway.   
  
Some of Yixing's dampness has rubbed off on Lu Han. He swipes his hand down his arm and rubs his fingertips together. "Sorry."  
  
"It's okay," Yixing says, wringing water out of his hair with a towel. His eyes flicker from the spot above Lu Han's ear, onto Lu Han's face. "I finished learning the chords for your solo. We can start practicing together soon."  
  
Funny thing is Lu Han hadn't even asked for a solo stage, he's just too popular not to have one. And when Baekhyun pushed for Chanyeol to feature on drums for his Boohwal cover, SM realized what kind of opportunity they had with Yixing, and paired him with Lu Han to provide acoustic guitar.  
  
"It'll sound better with you." Lu Han adds, before he can find the energy to decide not to, "Can we talk for a second?"  
  
Yixing is wearing little more than his underwear, but he nods anyway as he continues to drip all over the hardwood floor. Drops of water stick to his collarbones; a few run under the neckline of his tank top. It's both the best and worst way to do this: tired and exposed and raw. Lu Han has held off this conversation long enough.  
  
"I don't think it's a good idea for us to be around each other, all the time, after last month," he says. "I'm not trying to--I still want us to be us, but there are some things I need to think through on my own."  
  
A month ago, Lu Han said he thought they should take some time off. They had been getting coffee in Apgujeong, standing at the cafe register, and Lu Han was all of a sudden afraid of something nameless and towering and the only way he knew how to avoid it was to let go of Yixing's hand. Right now, Yixing's body language tenses up, like in the moment before he sprained his ankle in the practice room last year, like he's hearing Lu Han say it all over again.  
  
"You don't have to explain, if you can't," Yixing tells him slowly. "We're both adults. We know what we want."  
  
"It's not that straightforward," Lu Han says. "Wanting a relationship isn't like wanting a singing career or, I dunno, wanting a dog."  
  
"I hope you want me more than you want a dog," Yixing interrupts.  
  
"At least a dog wouldn't talk back," Lu Han says, and Yixing laughs a little, leaning away and into the wall. The rest of the dorm is strangely quiet, so Lu Han tries to keep his voice down. "I'm going to ask you a question. Don't get mad at me."  
  
"Okay," Yixing says.  
  
"How did you know you didn't just want us to be together because it was an easy thing to want?"  
  
Yixing doesn't get mad, but his reply is measured out. "Why does it have to be hard?"  
  
"I don't mean it like that," Lu Han says.  
  
Yixing shoves his fingers through his wet hair. "Then say it better."  
  
Lu Han, frustrated, guilty, grasps for the right words. He isn't used to being unable to communicate with Yixing. "I need to make sure," he says, "that this isn't just something we fell into. I need to see if, in every version, I end up in the same place."  
  
Yixing looks down, then back up. He takes so long to respond that Lu Han starts to think he isn't going to. "Are you asking me to wait?"  
  
"That's unfair to you," Lu Han says.  
  
"Don't just decide that for me," Yixing says, finally sounding annoyed. "Are we friends?"  
  
Lu Han flinches back. "What?"  
  
"Are we friends," Yixing repeats, softer.  
  
"Yeah," Lu Han says. "Yes."  
  
"Then you take care of what you want," Yixing says. His hand reaches up, propelled like a ship through water, to tuck a piece of hair behind Lu Han's ear. "I'll take care of what I want. And we'll see where we end up."  
  
  
  
  
  
The tour starts on May 21st, three weeks later. Some snapshots make it past the adrenaline clearer than others:  
  
The nervous energy in Joonmyun's voice during the press conference.

Kris' large hand over Lu Han's when he gathers them into a circle backstage. The lights.

Rushing through costume changes while EXO-K is the one performing, Minseok helping knot Lu Han's tie when all the stylists already have their hands full. Taking turns making fun of Zitao's ridiculous, skin-tight pants.  
  
The look in Baekhyun's eyes when he comes back to the dressing room, sweaty and glowing from his solo, shouting, I have the best fucking job in the world.

The deafening noise when Jongin rises from under the stage during the final set, surrounded by smoke, as the opening chant for MAMA surges through the arena. The way Chanyeol holds his mic out during his introduction, and the audience screams back his name.  
  
Finding Sehun during one of their unchoreographed numbers, running in slow motion across the stage to spin each other around. Kyungsoo weaponizing himself with a bubble shooter gun during the encore.

Listening to Jongdae soar through the bridge of Baby Don't Cry.

Sitting on a stool under a sky of glowsticks, Yixing with his eyes lowered and concentrating on his guitar, mouthing along to the lyrics as Lu Han opens up and sings.  
  
  
  
  
  
Baekhyun and Chanyeol crash their dorm less than half an hour after they all pile home from their last show in Seoul. "We're going out for food," Chanyeol announces. "You're all coming."  
  
Kris, face-down on the couch, tries to wave them away. "Nowhere's open."  
  
"Somewhere is always open," Baekhyun says. He looks to the rest of them with potent optimism. "You guys will come, right? Everyone else already turned us down."  
  
"I'll come," Lu Han says, and tugs on Kris' lifeless ankle. "We deserve to celebrate."  
  
They find themselves at a late-night barbecue restaurant, an hour too early for the rush of drunken club-goers. Minseok stayed behind, so as the oldest, Lu Han treats them to samgyeopsal. Baekhyun chats with Zitao about the concert while Zitao absorbs little but agrees with everything. Jongdae sneaks pictures of Kris dozing off and close to falling over in his chair. Lu Han isn't hungry but he's awake, and he likes being here with them, wearing beanies as ineffectual disguises in the middle of the summer, indulging in the temporary calm. He steadies Kris' body until Kris is leaned against him, his gelled hair itching Lu Han's neck, his face relaxed and young. Then he poses for Jongdae's phone, giving Kris a pair of bunny ears.  
  
"This is going to be my new background," Jongdae declares.  
  
"Send a copy to me too," Chanyeol says. He starts to grab for the phone on his own, but their server arrives with the meat.  
  
With the arm that isn't being crushed by Kris' weight, Lu Han reaches over and shakes Yixing's shoulder. "Food's here," he says.  
  
Yixing lifts his cheek from the table, with the familiar look he gets when he doesn't recognize his surroundings. His eyes clear up when he sees Lu Han. Lu Han feels a small twist, left of center in his chest. He and Yixing are doing okay these days. Between the tour, the ten other people constantly around, and the barbed wire Lu Han raised between them, they don't spend as much time with each other off-hours. It's exactly what Lu Han asked for.  
  
"Baekhyun's gonna crash in the next ten minutes," he continues in Mandarin, "and you want to see it happen."  
  
Yixing rubs his eyes as he sits back up all the way. "I call dibs on drawing on his face," he says.  
  
"I already called dibs," Zitao says seriously. "I'm going to make him a cat."  
  
"I don't know what you're all talking about," Baekhyun says, arranging extra garlic in Chanyeol's lettuce wrap while Chanyeol isn't paying attention, "but it sounds dangerous."  
  
Baekhyun does crash, fooling around one moment and trying to spread ssamjang over Jongdae's shirt sleeve the next. They reorganize themselves so that Baekhyun and Kris can rest against each other, tilted together like the slopes of a mountain. Lu Han takes Baekhyun's previous seat, across from Yixing, and picks out grilled mushrooms to slide into Yixing's bowl. In return, when the table is down to their last piece of samgyeopsal, Yixing steals it with surprising deftness and passes it to Lu Han.  
  
Chanyeol opens his mouth, ready to fight for it, until Lu Han, very slowly, licks over the slice of meat's entire surface area. Chanyeol's mouth snaps shut. He looks both grossed out and admiring.  
  
"Lu Han is godless," Jongdae explains.  
  
"He's my least favorite friend," Zitao says, a phrase he picked up from Sehun.  
  
Yixing shrugs, glancing over. "He's okay," he says. "I kind of like him." As if it's that simple, that inarguable of a fact. Lu Han feels it again, another tiny detonation. He's standing at the mouth of a rabbit hole that he has already been down, nearly reaching the end before he dug his fingers into the dirt wall and made himself climb back out.  
  
  
  
  
  
Lu Han sticks with Minseok on the flight to Japan. Minseok doesn't question the new seating arrangement, and instead hands over his left earbud. The mp3 player is one of Sehun's, so they listen to bubblegum pop and weird electro-house for the entire two hours, and create new playlists with titles like  _Xiao Lu's Serenade Requests_.  
  
As the plane begins to descend, Minseok opens the window and peers out at the square piece of sky. "Wanna take a look?"  
  
Lu Han cranes over Minseok's shoulder, risking a glimpse down at the expanse of blue, blue water and the approaching smudge of the shoreline before he has to shy away.   
  
Minseok pulls down the window cover. "You know we have that bungee-jump promotional thing in Thailand, right," he says.  
  
"They said I wouldn't have to do it," Lu Han says. "I can sit on the ground and eat shaved ice while you guys embarrass yourselves on TV."  
  
"We all have to go up the platform, though," Minseok says. "And once you're up, you may as well come down. Standing up there thinking about it is the hardest part anyway."  
  
Lu Han has stood at the threshold of things, dipping his toes in the water, creating ripples, enough to know that isn't true. "I'm pretty sure the part where you throw yourself off a tower is harder," he laughs.  
  
Minseok's knee jostles against Lu Han's as the force of the plane wheels landing on the runway pushes them forward in their seats. "I will always be around to volunteer myself and help throw you off instead," he says sunnily.  
  
When the seatbelt signs switch off, Minseok stands up to stretch. "Are we sharing a hotel room too?"  
  
"Is that okay?" Lu Han asks, retrieving his backpack from under the seat in front of him. The golden MCM logo plate glints up at him.  
  
"It's up to you," Minseok says.  
  
  
  
  
  
Between the hours of pre-show rehearsal, soundcheck and staging adjustments that go on like years, Chanyeol coerces the staff into letting them play soccer during a break. The June weather heats up Lu Han's cheeks until they're pink. He steals the soccer ball out of Chanyeol's hands as they gather on the grassy lawn that borders the gymnasium. "K versus M?"  
  
"That's too unbalanced," Chanyeol says. He rests his elbow on Lu Han's shoulder and Lu Han doesn't try to shake him off. "You and Minseok-hyung can't be on the same team."  
  
"You'll have Jongin and Sehun," Lu Han says.  
  
"Whether or not I have Jongin and Sehun is totally dependent on their mood."  
  
"Don't worry about it, hyung," Jongin says as he breaks Chanyeol and Lu Han apart to sling his arms around them both. He looks at Lu Han briefly and continues, "I'll wipe the floor with his face."  
  
Lu Han grins back. "I'm gonna make you cry."  
  
The match is an unholy mess. Jongdae defects to join K, Baekhyun defects to join M, and Jongin doesn't play soccer so much as he plays a sick game of Ruin Lu Han's Life, somehow managing to recruit Sehun, who adds, "Sorry, hyung!" every time he helps Jongin foul. Eventually Kris defects to K too, because Chanyeol has been making outrageous puppy faces at him from across the field. "Against my better judgment, I'm passing the torch to Lu Han," he says.  
  
"So this is what it's like to have power," Lu Han muses.  
  
"I'm leaving too," says Minseok, but Lu Han hauls him back.   
  
Inevitably, Jongin chooses to stop Lu Han from scoring by picking up and running away with the ball. With no referee other than Joonmyun's tenuous sense of sportsmanship, the game dissolves into a soccer-rugby-football hybrid. Once K catches up to M's score, Lu Han exchanges a glance with Zitao, who is one of the only people in this band that Lu Han trusts to be just as nastily competitive. Zitao rolls his shoulders back in response. On the next play, he launches into a full-body tackle that sends Sehun flying into Jongin. "I'm your number one anti-fan," Jongin yells as he goes down.  
  
Less than a minute later, without any help from Jongin, Lu Han slams straight into Yixing on his way to K's goal.  
  
"Man down," Chanyeol shouts. Before Lu Han can react, Kris is swooping in for the ball.  
  
"Wasn't that our esteemed leader?" Yixing says, winded, while the game continues without them.  
  
"He turned traitor," Lu Han says. "I'm your duizhang now."  
  
Yixing grins up at him. "Hey, duizhang."  
  
It's been months since they were in a safe enough place with each other to flirt. Lu Han tastes grass and dirt, and the thin cotton of his shirt sticks to his back. His elbows sting; they must have gotten scraped in the fall. Somehow, Yixing still feels good under him. Lu Han knows he's only out of breath because of the collision, but that doesn't stop his brain from zeroing in on Yixing's knees trapping his own, Yixing's chest hotter than the Tokyo humidity. He doesn't feel safe at all. He feels cloudy and hyperaware at the same time, aware of the shape of Yixing's thighs, of Yixing pressed up against him. He doesn't look at Yixing's mouth, until Yixing says, "Lu Han," his voice muted now, and then he's on his feet, and then he's stepping back.  
  
  
  
  
  
They had been getting coffee in Apgujeong. Lu Han was wondering whether he wanted a hot or cold drink. It was March, the temperature thawing. Yixing was wearing one of Lu Han's hoodies, which was the only type of clothing they tended to share, because Yixing hated half the things in Lu Han's closet. The sleeves were too long on Lu Han, so they were too long on Yixing, but it gave them a way to less plainly hold hands down the street.  
  
"I can't decide," Lu Han sighed dramatically. "Let's split an ice cream."  
  
"Sure," Yixing said. "I already ordered one. Matcha, right?"  
  
Lu Han looked down at where their hands were locked through a layer of fleece fabric. He thought, with an awful clarity: I'm not good at not being with you. Yixing came so easily that the uncertainty of what would happen if it ever became hard pulled Lu Han under like quicksand. His teachers had always called him fickle as a child. His father, while they were both at their lowest, had called him selfish. He remembered flitting between friend groups, hairstyles. The first month at Yonsei when he blocked his mother's number so he couldn't check to see if she tried to call. Lu Han has grown up since then, but more than anything else, he still hates being the one left behind.   
  
  
  
  
  
They're back in Seoul for a period, doing press, performing at other events, shooting content for the DVD. Kyungsoo is in and out of recording studios, featuring on drama soundtracks, and Chanyeol has an MC gig with KBS. In July, EXO-M heads to China for a concert appearance and some downtime. Being on tour is like getting sucked into an alternate dimension of hotel rooms and sold-out stadiums. Breaking out of that vortex, the world spins in real time again. In the grand scheme of things, Lu Han is good at managing homesickness, but if there's anywhere that comes close, it's Beijing.  
  
Today, Yixing's practicing guitar. Lu Han can hear him through the walls as he waits on the water kettle in the kitchen. Once Yixing plays his way through all of the Khalil Fong in his repertoire, he moves on to Lu Han's solo song. After some hesitation, Lu Han reaches for a second mug.  
  
Yixing looks up when Lu Han enters. "Hey," he greets, but when Lu Han sets both mugs down on the nightstand, his shoulders stiffen. "You can't do that." It's as confrontational as he ever gets.  
  
"It's just tea," Lu Han says. "Is tea against the rules now?"  
  
"I don't know, they're your rules," Yixing responds, because he can be mean when he wants to be. Lu Han often forgets that even with Yixing's resilience, it's been half a year of this limbo. Something must show up on Lu Han's face, because Yixing reins himself in and turns back to his guitar. "We can't do things like tea if you're just going to make me guess at what it means. Sometimes I can't tell if you're getting closer or farther away."  
  
Lu Han sits on his own bed and pulls his knees up. "I can't really tell either," he admits. It's the half-truth. The full truth is that Lu Han can't stop obsessing over what should be as natural as breathing, and then what happens once you begin to control each breath in and out as the panic of impermanence builds in your chest.  
  
In the end, Yixing leans over and picks up the mug anyway. It was a thank-you gift Lu Han bought when he followed Yixing home to Changsha last year. There's a cartoon couple painted on the ceramic, and the mug's lid resembles an umbrella. Yixing'd thought it was really clever.  
  
"I'm trying to find my way back to you," says Lu Han.  
  
"If you do, promise you're not going to psyche yourself out of it again."  
  
"Is that what I'm doing? Psyching myself out?"  
  
"Pretty much." Yixing takes a sip of his tea. "Promise?"  
  
Lu Han hates how scratchy his throat feels. "Yeah, promise."  
  
"Your tea sucks, by the way," Yixing says evenly, though he keeps drinking it. "You steep it for too long. It gets bitter."  
  
"You should've told me that before I made you two years worth of it."  
  
Yixing sets his umbrella mug down. He strums a chord, hums it back. "If we're not sleeping together anymore, I'm going to complain as much as I can."  
  
Lu Han can't help but smile. "Here we go."  
  
"Your jokes are lame," Yixing sings, playing along on his guitar, "and I don't really care about Manchester United. Why are you so weird about people touching your stuff? Why are you so annoying? Don't pull my hair so hard when I'm sucking you off."  
  
"When I'm sucking you off," Lu Han harmonizes.  
  
  
  
  
  
EXO-M had a live chat interview once that Lu Han only remembers from all the other live chat interviews because they were each writing on mini whiteboards, and their host, a pretty older woman they'd met before, chose a fan question that asked, "If you were a girl, which member would you like to date?"  
  
Lu Han laughed harder than anyone else, grabbing onto Minseok's arm as he pulled the marker's cap off with his teeth. "If you don't put my name down, I'll be hurt," he said in Korean. Minseok flashed him a grin and wrote in precise characters,  _duizhang_.  
  
On his left, Yixing was tapping his marker against his cheek. He glanced at Lu Han, mouthing, Can I pick you? and Lu Han mouthed back, Too obvious.   
  
In the end everyone went with Kris, citing his shelter and strength (Zitao), his unexpected softness (Yixing), his long legs (Minseok). Jongdae went into depth about their hypothetical first date, while Kris grew more and more embarrassed with each board that turned over to reveal his name. Kris himself wrote down Yixing. "Dating Yixing would more or less sign me up to date Lu Han too," Kris told their host, "so it's a good bargain."  
  
This memory bleeds into every other memory where they ask him who he shares a room with, who he tells his secrets to, who he'd bring if he were stranded on an island. "Who would you rob a bank with?" Lu Han used to interrogate, lightning-round interview practice during those first several weeks after debut. "Who would you trust to plot murder with you?" and Yixing would say confidently, "Lu Han would even help me bury the body."  
  
Lu Han doesn't know how smart it is to let one name be his answer to every question. Some days he forgets to think of the first time he kissed Yixing as an actual first kiss, sitting on Yixing's bed with his tea cooling between his palms, early autumn with the windows open and Yixing skimming through a worn-out paperback book, because it'd seemed so obvious, like something they had already been doing for ages.  
  
  
  
  
  
This is how Lu Han spends their tour:  
  
In Taiwan, Lu Han is assigned to the self-cam, collecting footage of EXO backstage for the DVD. He roams around the dressing room, making stops at Baekhyun re-applying his own hairspray, Jongin napping on the couch, Minseok engrossed in killing zombies on Sunghwan's iPad. In between, the camera finds Yixing's naked back in a makeup station mirror, the curvature of his spine.  
  
In Singapore, he and Sehun sneak out of their hotel at night to explore Marina Bay. They take selcas on the blue-lit Helix Bridge and dodge phone calls from their managers and buy overpriced cups of ice cream. Lu Han licks spoonfuls into his mouth as they walk down the promenade, and crushes down on a sensory memory.  
  
In Thailand, a production team takes EXO-M out to Pattaya to bungee-jump. They're brought up the platform in pairs, and make their jumps one by one: Kris with his arms spread out, Minseok catapulting himself into the air, Jongdae screaming at the top of his lungs. Yixing jumps without fanfare or hesitation, just a straight dive down, the shape of him a dark, precise line against the sky, the cord stretching and releasing behind him.   
  
Lu Han goes up with Zitao, who rubs his shoulders the entire time and squeezes his waist when the platform sways. Zitao loves this kind of shit, backflipping off the platform right when the jump supervisor ends his countdown. Show off, Lu Han thinks, and sucks in a violent gulp of air.   
  
When it's Lu Han's turn, he tiptoes to the edge of the platform and looks down at the clear lake under his feet and feels completely sick. He wants to throw up. He's shaking. Clenching his hands into fists, he searches for the five shadows waving and cheering him on from below, the bright blue sweater that he recognizes as Yixing's. He rocks back on his feet, away, then pitches forward again. He imagines taking the jump before he actually does it, as if picturing himself from a distance, falling the sixty meters, his fingertips skimming the surface of the water, before the cord recoils and jerks him back. He falls again, the height halved, flies up, falls, and keeps throwing his body back and forth through the air while Yixing waits on the ground.   
  
  
  
  
  
When they finally bring the tour to China, their first city is Guangzhou, little under a week after Kris' 24th birthday. It's a genius scheduling move. The stage crew wheels a giant cake onstage during their last ment, and everyone, including the fans, sings Happy Birthday. Zitao has written out a speech. Lu Han pats Kris' hip when Zitao starts saying things like  _never change_  and  _like family_  and  _let's continue creating beautiful memories and chasing our dreams together_.  
  
"Happy birthday," Lu Han says, out of his mic's range. "Don't cry."  
  
"Behave yourself," Kris says, sounding overwhelmed.  
  
Baekhyun wins the honor of feeding Kris his first piece of birthday cake through some aggressive rock-paper-scissors. Kris opens his mouth, Baekhyun pulls the fork away at the last second, and this goes on for over a minute before Jongdae puts everyone out of their misery and crushes a handful of white and blue frosting into both of their faces. The rest of the band lights up, one after another down the row.  
  
By the second encore number, Lu Han has cake in his ears and cake on his forehead and cake in his hair and eyelashes. When he tries to sing, he gets cake all over his mic. The only other person worse off is Jongin, who had a chunk of cake stuffed under his clothes by a determined Kyungsoo.  
  
Lu Han heads back to the main stage to find a towel, past Sehun, who's helping Jongin deal with the cake in his jeans by making it even worse. Halfway down the walkway, Yixing comes up to him with his arms open. After Zitao and Minseok double-teamed him earlier, Lu Han's first reflex is to back away. But Yixing's hands are empty, his face is shining, and Lu Han doesn't know why but he stays where he is.   
  
He lets himself sink into the hug as the audience's screams grow louder. Yixing smells like sugar and sweat. Then Lu Han recognizes the thickness between their stomachs.  
  
"You're a public menace," he hisses into Yixing's ear.  
  
"You should've run," Yixing teases. He hugs Lu Han closer.  
  
"I don't like running from you," Lu Han says. The moment he says it, part of him wants to take it back, cram it back down his throat. The other part is almost grateful to hear it hit the air and expand. Yixing seems to notice it too, Lu Han's sudden inability to deflect. Lu Han can't see Yixing's expression but he can read it in the delay before Yixing lets go. All of the frosting on Yixing's shirt has been smeared onto Lu Han's, dyeing the white cotton a bright and unnatural blue. Amused, Yixing scoops some of it onto his fingers and streaks it over Lu Han's cheek, down to his mouth. Lu Han's skin conducts electricity. Every cell is a stripped wire. He licks his thumb clean and the cake is cloyingly sweet but he can hear his body, louder than ever, asking for more.  
  
  
  
  
  
After the next fansign event, Lu Han catches ahold of Yixing's shirt on their way back to the vans. "Room with me tonight?"  
  
Doubt flashes across Yixing's face, but he agrees, "Sure."  
  
That night, Sehun and Jongin invite Lu Han along to sneak into the indoor pool after hours. They swim around dunking each other underwater, and when Sehun pushes down on Lu Han's shoulders, Lu Han stays submerged in that clear, blue world for a prolonged moment, without resistance, until he has exhaled all the oxygen from his lungs. He comes back up coughing, shaking the sting of water from his eyes. Sehun's voice filters through, an uncertain echo of  _Are you okay?_  as he wades closer to make sure he hasn't just drowned his favorite person. Lu Han pushes the hair back from his face. "Yeah, I'm good," he says, and grins at Jongin shark-like behind Sehun, preparing to ambush.  
  
By the time security discovers them and sends them to bed, it's past midnight. Yixing's still awake when Lu Han gets back, the notebook where he writes all of his lyrics open in his lap. The TV plays on half-mute. "Did you get in trouble?" he asks.  
  
"A little bit," Lu Han says. There's something pure and uncomplicated about the exhaustion he feels right now. Like he's already done everything he can, and the rest is up to gravity. He collapses onto Yixing's bed and pushes his cold toes against Yixing's bare calves. Yixing kicks him, then traps Lu Han's feet between his ankles. They're only touching in that one place, but the warmth of Yixing's body is immediate. Anchored, Lu Han channel surfs until he lands on Fei Cheng Wu Rao, and they spend the next half hour watching mind-numbing dating shows, where Lu Han insults each new male contender and Yixing, working on his songs, starts to write down what Lu Han says by accident.  _Your heart casts a shadow in mine I can't believe you showed up on national television wearing a pig suit._  The peacefulness is a little devastating. Lu Han listens to Yixing scratch words down on paper, once in a while tucking his feet closer around Lu Han's, testing a few lines out loud. He drifts off to that sound.  
  
When he wakes up later, he can smell the chlorine on his skin and hair, which is damp and drying in knots against the cold pillow. The TV is silent, and Yixing leans over him, whispering, "Is this where you're sleeping?"  
  
Lu Han yawns into his wrist. "Should I move?"  
  
"You don't have to. I can take the other bed."  
  
Under the yellow severity of the lamplight, Lu Han pulls himself upright. He rolls his neck in a circle, works out the tension, and when he opens his eyes again, Yixing is looking down at him with a quiet kind of consideration, as if each time he comes to Lu Han, it's a choice, conscious and deliberate and necessary. It's the same kind of choice Lu Han has to make right now, as he weighs the radius to the ground over and over, and then makes himself stop, because there's only one direction for him to go anyway. He doesn't even remember what city they're in. Running across six different countries, all the people he surrounds himself with, and somehow he's still flying towards Yixing. No one teaches birds to migrate, but they always find their way south before the cold.  
  
"Am I still what you want?" Lu Han asks.   
  
"What a question," Yixing laughs.  
  
"Am I?" Lu Han asks again.  
  
Yixing shakes his head and says, "You go first."  
  
If Lu Han believed in saying what he meant, what he would've told Yixing back in Apgujeong was: Packing everything into one single person is fucking myopic. You're setting yourself up for something brutal. I'd rather spend the next eight months turning my back than face forward and risk watching a distance move in.  
  
What he'd say right now is: I'd rather traverse the distance again and again.  
  
Lu Han tries to communicate in other ways. He leans up, his hands outstretched as if towards a lake of water. Yixing draws back, guarded. I deserve that, Lu Han thinks guiltily. Carefully, he tries again. He rises to his knees on the mattress, so that they're level with each other, and Yixing watches him with a flicker of caution that melts into comprehension. He stays still, the beach that receives the tide, as Lu Han step by step cups his palm against Yixing's jaw, slides his fingers into Yixing's already messy hair, loops his arms behind Yixing's neck. His journey back to Yixing has nowhere left to go, but Lu Han isn't sure he wandered far in the first place.  
  
He brushes his mouth against Yixing's temple first. Down, to both eyelids, then his cheeks. He rediscovers the way Yixing's pulse quickens, the way Yixing makes a soft, hungry little noise when Lu Han finally reaches Yixing's mouth. He touches bottom, lands on his feet.   
  
  
  
  
  
It snows through the entire morning of their second show in Beijing. The twelve of them loiter outside the back entrance to the MasterCard Center, where the concrete is hidden under a thin white veil. After this, it's back to Seoul for the end of the year award ceremonies, then a final encore concert the next month. Chanyeol has already started accepting wagers on which of them will end up crying onstage. No one bets on Lu Han except Yixing.   
  
"Him? Seriously?" Chanyeol says.  
  
"I just have a feeling," Yixing says, before Lu Han punches him in the arm.  
  
The snow won't stick for long, but that doesn't make it any less cold, and the most anyone is wearing is a sweatshirt. To compensate, three different people burrow under Kris' arms, and Kyungsoo half-jogs, half-waddles in a circle around them to stay warm, his sneakers crunching over the ice. Lu Han can see his own breath materializing. He and Yixing huddle together on a step and watch as Joonmyun tries to convince Jongin to put on his goddamn scarf.   
  
Someone calls out Lu Han's name. When he looks around for the source, a snowball hits him square in the face.  
  
Lu Han sits, perfectly still, as the snow crumbles and slides off his skin, the shock of it freezing through him, Yixing laughing so hard he's folded over.  
  
"My bad," Minseok shouts, as Jongdae cracks up behind him.  
  
Minseok is a really good friend. It's a shame that he has to die. "Come on," Lu Han says, "we're going to war."  
  
"This has nothing to do with me," Yixing says, but he climbs to his feet anyway, rubbing his hands together and blowing into the cup of his palms. His nose is turning red, lips chapped by the dry Beijing air. These are all details Lu Han is still in the process of rediscovering. It's been a long year of travel, and winter is always when the earth is furthest from the sun. Still, there's a solar pull. Even bodies as big as planets are guided through their orbits by a larger force.   
  
"You have some snowball on you," Yixing adds. He brushes out the collar of Lu Han's sweater until the rest of the ice falls out in clumps. Then he moves on to Lu Han's hair, combing out powdered snow that dissolves under his touch. His hand is wet and cold on Lu Han's cheek, and Lu Han's nerve endings, numbed from the weather, gather to it. He turns his face towards Yixing, sunlight. The wind at the top of a tower that carries him as he steps forward.  
  
  



	9. tin can telephones (d.o./baekhyun)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> kyungsoo and baekhyun are hot and cold, but the laryngitis helps.

Baekhyun wakes up the day before Music Bank sounding like a frog who’s smoked two packs a day for the last twenty years. “No,” he moans, his cheek smushed against the kitchen table. “No, no, no.”  
  
Chanyeol sits across from him, backwards in his chair. “Hey, can you say  _I’ll never let go, Jack_?”  
  
“I’m going to punch you right in the mouth,” Baekhyun says.  
  
Kyungsoo presses the back of his palm against Baekhyun’s forehead. He’s running a fever. Baekhyun kind of shies back, like he’d brush Kyungsoo off if he had the energy to, so Kyungsoo does him the favor and lets his hand fall away.  
  
“Say  _your mother sucks cock in hell_ ,” Chanyeol says.  
  
“Your mother sucks cock in hell,” Baekhyun snarls convincingly.  
  
Joonmyun, who’s on the phone with the company, says loudly, “No, sir, you didn’t hear anything, that was just us singing. Lalala.”  
  
Kyungsoo shields his eyes on his way to the tea kettle so he won’t have to address Baekhyun twisting Chanyeol’s nipples through his shirt. It’s going to be a long comeback.  
  
  
  
  
  
The majority of Baekhyun’s flu symptoms are under control by the time they need him in front of cameras. Pump him full of enough painkillers and he can lipsync his heart out, but there’s no guarantee his voice’ll recover to sing live next week. “Keep hydrated,” the doctor advises, “and don’t strain yourself.” In the meantime, the company start distributing Baekhyun’s parts. Half of them go to Kyungsoo, the other half go to Joonmyun, and when it’s obvious the two of them are overextended, the first couple of lines in the bridge go to Sehun.  
  
“He’s going to blow it,” Baekhyun tells Kyungsoo in confidence later as he leans in Kyungsoo’s doorway. “He’s a good kid, but he’s not ready.”  
  
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Kyungsoo says, slapping his palms against his cheeks to stay awake. Part of him wants to push back his shower until the morning, but nine times out of ten Jongin’s comatose and uses up all the hot water standing in there trying to remember if he already shampooed his hair. So Kyungsoo grabs a clean towel and starts to take off his shirt. When Baekhyun doesn’t make any moves to leave, Kyungsoo hesitates, his bare stomach suddenly cold and sensitive.   
  
At home, without the right stage magic, Baekhyun actually looks sick. He slammed into Zitao during their first taping today, but only the second one will air. On their way out of the building, he kept himself upright using Kyungsoo’s shoulder, which was the closest thing around. For a moment Kyungsoo can see Baekhyun gear up to do it again, reaching forward, getting ready to speak. Then it’s over. “Help me help Sehun, alright?” Baekhyun jokes. “Help me save us from ourselves.”  
  
Kyungsoo smiles wryly and finishes pulling off his shirt, disappearing behind a stretch of white cotton that screens Baekhyun’s face. “That ship sailed a long time ago,” he says.  
  
  
  
  
  
Baekhyun isn’t allowed to talk for two days.  _fly safe,_  he texts all of EXO-M in lieu of a proper goodbye.  _did u do this to me u jealous fucker,_  he texts Jongdae specifically.  _ur fly’s open_ , he texts Chanyeol as they’re waiting backstage at Inkigayo. Chanyeol peers at his phone, peers further down, then blows Baekhyun a kiss from across the room as he zips himself up. Two things about Baekhyun bring in the money: his voice and his personality. Handicap the first and it kicks the second into overdrive. Kyungsoo gets that, the secret equation for why Baekhyun has become so annoying in the past 36 hours, but his patience is never as immeasurable as he thinks. Baekhyun’s interpretive dancing was funny the first four times.  
  
Give it a rest, Kyungsoo thinks. He’s exhausted, stressed out, radioactive. He knows Baekhyun is too.  
  
When it does happen, it’s back in the SM office after SBS. Kyungsoo tags along with their manager to pick up some snacks across the street because he’s the only one who can keep everyone’s 1am beverage preferences straight. Afterwards he goes around the practice room like it’s Christmas, pulling different colored drinks out of his plastic bag.  
  
“Coffee,” he calls out, and Jongin steps out of a half-assed pirouette to make grabby hands at him.  
  
Strawberry Milkis for Sehun, oolong for Joonmyun, diabetes in a can that’s 100 calories over the dietary allotment for Chanyeol, who takes Kyungsoo by the hand and says reverently, “Marry me.”  
  
“I can do better,” Kyungsoo says, while Jongin extends into an arabesque so he can accidentally on purpose slam his foot into Chanyeol’s ass. “Where’s Baekhyun?”  
  
“Taking a wiz,” Sehun says, sucking at the soda that spilled around the mouth of his can.  
  
In reality, Baekhyun’s sitting out in the hallway, right by the practice room. Kyungsoo shuts the door behind himself. “Omija tea,” he says, handing it over. Baekhyun lifts his forehead from his knees. He pulls his phone out and Kyungsoo’s pocket vibrates right after.  
  
_thx_  
  
_What’re you doing out here?_  Kyungsoo texts back.  
  
_needed a break,_  Baekhyun responds. He has eyebags the size of impact craters. Above them, his eyes are a barricaded door. It feels like a dismissal, but before Kyungsoo turns to go back inside, his phone goes off again.  
  
_this sucks_  
  
Kyungsoo types out, then deletes, then re-types:  _Want me to stay?_  
  
Instead of answering, Baekhyun unscrews the cap off his tea and scoots over a few inches. Kyungsoo sits down, copying Baekhyun’s position, and leans back into the wall so that their shoulders graze. He takes his own drink out of the bag. Baekhyun laughs when he sees it’s a juice box. He sounds weak and scratched up. It makes Kyungsoo think of how the inside of Baekhyun’s throat must look. Swollen and inflamed, craving water. The thickest, most intimate shade of red.  
  
  
  
  
  
Kyungsoo lost his voice too a couple years ago when he caught his girlfriend’s mono and it hit him three times as hard. He fell behind on a month’s worth of training. She’d felt so bad about it that she brought over enough homemade soup in those four weeks to replace his entire bloodstream. Then Hyunsik made him soup, and Jongin and Sehun made him really terrible soup, and Kyungsoo started having fever dreams about drowning in the stuff. Somehow that was always how it worked out. People finding their way to his front door. Kyungsoo, choosing whether to let them in.  
  
Three months later Byun Baekhyun joined SM. Another year and they were debuting in the same band. In between, Baekhyun said, There’s this new indie record store in Hongdae. Wanna check it out? Kyungsoo said, I can’t today, I have something with Chanyeol, maybe next week? Next week Baekhyun said, Nevermind, I heard it’s kind of shitty. Sometimes there’s no good explanation. Leading up to March, they had a dozen photoshoots together, half of them inevitably scrapped, but they played around and made small talk as the cameras rolled. Their photographer wanted them to sit across from each other and grasp at each other’s hands, something about vocal lines and conceptual mirror images. They were wearing matching beanies, the same brand shoes, and Kyungsoo felt a little less ridiculous than he usually did when he was asked to model. As instructed, he stretched both arms forward and linked his fingers through Baekhyun’s. Baekhyun pulled away with an easy smile.  
  
  
  
  
  
Kyungsoo asked, exactly once, more out of curiosity than a real sense of hurt: “Does Baekhyun have a problem with me?”  
  
“Nah, he likes you,” Chanyeol said, leaning his body to the left as if that’d help steer his go-kart away from premature death. “Why? Did something happen?”  
  
“I just get mixed signals,” Kyungsoo said. The organizers kept seating him next to Baekhyun at the fansigns. In the smaller venues, summer heat, their thighs would glue together under the long table. It was a toss up whether Baekhyun’d use the three hours to draw a dozen tic-tac-toe grids between them, or ignore Kyungsoo’s whispered side comments in his ear.  
  
“Oh yeah?” Chanyeol laughed. “That’s funny.”  
  
“What does that mean?” Kyungsoo asked, as he concentrated on trying to run Chanyeol off the track.  
  
“You’re pretty, well, you know. You can be pretty unavailable. Baekhyun likes himself too much to wanna put himself in that kind of position.”  
  
Kyungsoo scrunched up his face. “You like yourself just as much,” he said.  
  
“I’m a sucker in love,” Chanyeol lamented.  
  
“The two of you deserve each other,” Kyungsoo said seriously, and then: “Turtle shell!”  
  
“Fuck,” Chanyeol shouted.  
  
  
  
  
  
“Remember that you’re representing me,” Baekhyun says, distorted behind the mouth mask. Yesterday the entire band signed it, half of them as if it were a cast, the other half as if it were a tombstone.  _You are missed_  was Kyungsoo’s sober contribution. Chanyeol added beneath it:  _Beloved Friend, Shitty Roommate_.  
  
“I don’t sound anything like you,” Sehun says.  
  
Baekhyun pats Sehun’s shoulder. “That’s a shortcoming many people have to overcome.”  
  
“The problem’s your energy, not the way you sound,” Kyungsoo says. “Sing it like it actually makes a difference to you.”  
  
Looking harassed, Sehun tries again, with Baekhyun and Kyungsoo watching him from the bed like it’s an episode of Korea’s Got Talent. But despite putting in extra time with their vocal coach, Sehun's defense mechanism of profound boredom makes him flatter than ever.  
  
“NG, NG,” Baekhyun interrupts.  
  
“Your entire life is an NG,” Sehun says sourly.  
  
“Forget technique,” Kyungsoo advises. “There’ll be a strong backtrack, so just focus on making it look good.”  
  
Baekhyun brightens. “Yeah, have fun with it. Find the camera and grab the air.” He demonstrates, reaching his hand up and whipping it back towards his chest. “It’s classic boyband.”  
  
Sehun grabs the air with great uncertainty.  
  
“Now throw the air onto the ground,” Kyungsoo adds. He manages to keep a straight face. Baekhyun’s having a harder time. Deeply unimpressed, Sehun throws the air.  
  
“Add a wink at the end. No, not a cute wink, a sexy wink.”  
  
“Wipe your thumb across your lip. Like you’re wiping off spit.”  
  
“Now grab your crotch,” Baekhyun says, before he’s laughing so hard he falls backwards, hiding his face against the small of Kyungsoo’s back. Kyungsoo grins up at Sehun and catches the stuffed animal aimed for his chest.  
  
“I’m leaving,” Sehun says. “I hope this comeback fails and we disband forever.”  
  
“Bye, Sehun,” Baekhyun gasps into Kyungsoo’s shirt. Eventually he sits up again, his hair messed up and charged with static. “Fuck, that hurt,” he says, hoarser than he’d been half a minute ago. He takes off the mouth mask, cheeks flushed pink beneath it, looking less like the sick glow he’s been carrying around the past ten days and more like something else. Kyungsoo abruptly feels like he shouldn’t be there. He lies back until he hits Baekhyun’s pillow, as if that’s a viable escape route. Baekhyun twists around so he can look at him.  
  
“What about you?”  
  
“What about me what?”  
  
Baekhyun shrugs. “Do you wanna practice your new lines on me?”  
  
Kyungsoo has been practicing all week, but he’s heard the original too many times already. The way the song plays through his brain doesn’t match up with the way it sounds out of his mouth. “I don’t think I’m ready,” he says.  
  
Baekhyun lies down next to him, tugging the stuffed animal out of his grip. Kyungsoo turns onto his side. He’s briefly concerned that Baekhyun’s still contagious, but for the most part all that occurs to him is the short length of Baekhyun’s lashes, drooped low over his eyes as he says, “Can I ask you something?”  
  
Kyungsoo nods. He doesn’t want to say anything else, like somehow that’ll ruin it, the words pushing Baekhyun further out. He waits for Baekhyun to ask but it never comes. Instead Baekhyun just kind of looks at him, stuck in thought, lips slightly parted. He’s closer than Kyungsoo realized. Close enough that Kyungsoo notices how good he smells. An unfamiliar sizzle of heat rolls down his spine. He wonders if he should shut his eyes. Baekhyun doesn’t look away from Kyungsoo’s mouth. His hand comes up and lands right below Kyungsoo’s collarbone, his fingertips reaching his neckline. Kyungsoo swallows against them without meaning to. He can feel his heartbeat more definitively at the base of his throat, the soft skin inside his elbows and behind his knees, which are not touching Baekhyun’s. None of it takes more than a handful of seconds, but Kyungsoo may as well have been trapped here for ages, waiting and resisting in equal parts, holding his breath, leaning in.  
  
Then Baekhyun lifts his gaze, accompanied by a tiny jerk of his body, like it’s all caught up to him: the open bedroom door behind them, Joonmyun down the hallway, who exactly they are. Half of Kyungsoo feels calmer; the other half, oddly bereft. Baekhyun shrugs again, as if to himself, and slowly drops his hand.  
  
  
  
  
  
The Ballad of Kyungsoo and Baekhyun goes like this. They’ve known each other almost two years. They’re friends. EXO isn’t famous enough yet for it to make a difference to their individual income, whose name gets credited for singing the chorus. In the beginning it’d stung to feel replaceable, but Kyungsoo slept it off. You can’t be weird with someone you need to stand with on a stage later and trust, with every inch of you, trust them not to fuck up, trust them to help bring out the best in yourself. So they’re not weird. They’re not distant, they’re not competitive, they’re not anything. If sometimes Kyungsoo thinks about what it’d be like to finish kissing him, most of the time he doesn’t. It has nothing to do with bad blood and more to do with plain old absence. A universe of negative space. A sound that won’t come out. 

 

 


	10. the leftovers club (d.o./baekhyun)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> breaking kyungsoo out of prison requires more from baekhyun than he originally planned. (vaguely a guardians of the galaxy au)  
> 2014 chinguline exchange @ livejournal.  
> dubcon/sex pollen warning.

  
As far as backstories go, Baekhyun's is pretty standard. Dead human mom. Absent alien dad. It happened, it sucked, he dealt with it. The bright side of being someone's leftovers was that nobody cared what he did next: if he wanted to explore the galaxy, planet-hop to his heart's content, get in all kinds of trouble. Some species might call that escapism in the most literal sense available. Baekhyun prefers the words  _opportunity_ , or  _Han Solo_.   
  
He found himself a motley crew along the way, pretty much by accident. They come and go for the most part, everyone with their own agendas. Chanyeol, a sweet, hulking tree creature. Jongdae, who was raised by a psychopath but maintains a sense of humor about it. Yixing drops by to hang out occasionally. Yixing the Destroyer, as he's known around this corner of the universe. Ravager of titans, devourer of souls. Actually how that'd started was Baekhyun'd gotten drunk off Shi'ar liquor this one time and picked a fight in an intergalactic bar with some assholes who'd been talking shit about  _all these half-breeds running around, stinking up the galaxy, the poor Earthie should've aborted the mutt when she had the chance--_  
  
"You're dead," Baekhyun said, while Kyungsoo held him back impatiently by the arm. "I'm gonna fucking kill you--"  
  
Asshole #1's third mouth curled into a sneer. "Is your little pet going to help?"  
  
That made Kyungsoo bristle, his tail shooting up. Things were getting out of control. Baekhyun looked back wildly towards their original table and found Yixing, flushed pink with alcohol, swaying in his seat. "You see my friend over there? That's Zhang Yixing. Ever heard of him? He's a fucking monster. He'll rip your lungs out, take a dump inside your gaping chest cavity and then write a song about it. He--he destroys women's realistic expectations for men, he's such a sensitive guy. He'll fuck you up."  
  
At that exact moment Yixing finished his drink, threw the bottle at the wall and, alarmingly, whipped forward at a 90-degree angle until his forehead smashed against the table. (It was the courteous thing to do back on his home planet.)  
  
Asshole #1 started to look unsure.   
  
"We should leave," Kyungsoo muttered, but then Asshole #1's asshole friend waved and said, "You genetic punchlines run along now," and Kyungsoo turned back around and threw the first punch.   
  
Kyungsoo met the minimum requirements for "being part of Baekhyun's crew," which were 1) spending a lot of time physically on Baekhyun's ship, the Suho, and 2) hitting people as a form of diplomatic action. He and Chanyeol came as a unit and often disappeared together, making their coin by running a combination of straight respectable jobs and old-school unscrupulous ones. In the end they always returned: two days later, four days, six. After all, everyone was accumulating more and more personal gear onboard. Kyungsoo tricked out the Suho with an upgraded arsenal. There was a series of clay pots like a staircase in the cargo hold, each one larger than the last, with a handmade sign above them: [34] DAYS WITHOUT CHANYEOL DYING.   
  
What all of this is trying to say is just that when Baekhyun didn't hear from Kyungsoo for over a week, he had a gut feeling that something'd gone wrong. So he called in a series of favors which finally produced a name: Basement 6 Penitentiary.  
  
Jongdae whistles lowly. "Kyungsoo really knows how to pick 'em."  
  
"I am Chanyeol," says Chanyeol gloomily, looming over the prison's holographic blueprints.  
  
Jongdae pats the thick bark of Chanyeol's shoulder. "So what's he in for?"   
  
The funny thing is that Baekhyun can't find any official record. Not only is there no documentation of an arrest, Kyungsoo doesn't exist on the books as an inmate. These types of off-planet asteroid prisons are shady by default, but this whole thing reeks more than usual.  
  
"I am Chanyeol," says Chanyeol, kind of mad now,  _Sounds more like a kidnapping_.  
  
"I know, big guy," Baekhyun says, then brightens. "So let's go steal our stuff back."  
  
  
-   
  
  
Basement 6 Penitentiary has a security system as rotten as its staff. It's weird that Kyungsoo hasn't broken himself out yet. Kyungsoo could stage ten separate jailbreaks before Baekhyun finishes breakfast. Without him, planning falls on Baekhyun's shoulders, and Baekhyun's plans aren't  _bad_ , they're just ("embarrassing," Kyungsoo would say) ("a cry for help," says Jongdae) ("I am Chanyeol," Chanyeol snickers) underdeveloped. There's usually a broad concept step 1--Sneak In As Plumbers--and then steps 2-10 are Fucking Wing It.  
  
"I'm better if I make stuff up on the fly," Baekhyun says. "That's just my personal style."  
  
"You gotta stop confusing personal style with character flaw," Jongdae says, then shuts up as they stroll past a building-sized prison guard in the empty hallway, who pins them both with an odd expression.  
  
"Morning, officer," Baekhyun says, instantly winsome as he hefts the toolkit in his hand. "Heard you folks have been having some plumbing issues."  
  
Some of the wariness bleeds off the guard's face. "We just put in that work order yesterday."  
  
"Well, we're all about fast service," Baekhyun says, but then the guard jerks a massive pink thumb towards the left.   
  
"CO bathroom's that way."  
  
"Warden wanted us to take a look at one of the cellblocks first," Baekhyun says, keeping it friendly. "Said it's getting pretty gnarly in there, if you know what I mean."  
  
"Which cellblock?" the guard asks.  
  
"B?" Baekhyun says.  
  
"You passed B."  
  
Baekhyun glances over his shoulder at Jongdae (who shrugs back as if to say  _it's all you, buddy_ ), then tries, "Which one's the cellblock with the mean little raccoon guy?"  
  
The guard stiffens and reaches for his belt. A second later Jongdae vaults himself through the air to lock his thighs around the guard's neck. Baekhyun doesn't even register the initial flash of movement until Jongdae's already whipping six feet of alien muscle towards the ground.   
  
The guard drops without a struggle. Jongdae lands next to him, crouched like a jungle cat.  
  
"How's that for personal style," he gloats.   
  
Jongdae made a clean break from the murder-for-cash business over a year ago. Still, there's the occasional glimmer that reminds Baekhyun: this one's dangerous. Jongdae's rapsheet is longer than Baekhyun's dick. But despite his previous line of work, he isn't really a duplicitous person. Theft, bribery, straight-up lying and cheating--that's Baekhyun's bread and butter, not Jongdae's. Baekhyun knows how to spot a liar, and then how to spot someone like Jongdae, someone who's always saying,  _I want to take this whole good guy transition seriously. I want to be better._ Baekhyun always grins: _Dude, you've been a sheep in wolf's clothing all along._  
  
Baekhyun stoops next to the guard's unconscious form and steals the ID card off his chest. So much for stealth plumber mode. "What now?"  
  
Jongdae cracks his neck. "Split up? I'll shut down the energy shield, you get Kyungsoo. Regroup in the hangar bay."  
  
"Sounds good," Baekhyun says. He grabs his element gun from inside the toolkit before handing the rest over to Jongdae. "Don't get caught."  
  
Jongdae knocks his fist against Baekhyun's shoulder in a growing tradition: "Don't get shot."  
  
  
-  
  
  
He gets lucky and finds Kyungsoo in the first place he looks: down the solitary confinement wing, locked up behind the final steel-enforced door.  
  
"Hey," Baekhyun calls through the viewing window, bypassing the lock with his borrowed ID. "Yo, Kyungsoo. Your ride's here."  
  
In the far corner of the cell, Kyungsoo lifts his head. His ears twitch, a pair of half-moons the same shade of ruddy brown as his hair. The lighting is low but Baekhyun doesn't need much of it to tell the rough shape that Kyungsoo's in, wrists cuffed, ankles and tail shackled together, the fur along his arms matted with sweat. His knees are tucked up tight and defensive against his chest. His human-like face, stubbornly expressionless.  
  
"Hurray," Kyungsoo croaks.  
  
"Vacation's over," Baekhyun says. "Ready to go?"  
  
"You couldn't send Chanyeol instead?" Kyungsoo says.  
  
"Prison's really changed you," Baekhyun jokes. He uses his element gun to melt through the chains. "You used to be such a pleasant person."  
  
Kyungsoo has enough energy for a tired grin. His eyes are glazed. "Why are you dressed like a plumber?"  
  
Baekhyun was hoping he'd ask. "Cause I'm saving you from a total shithole."  
  
But when Baekhyun tries to haul Kyungsoo back up onto his feet, he meets five tons of resistance. Kyungsoo makes a strangled sound as his knees fail him, and Baekhyun's own balance buckles. "Shit," Baekhyun says in surprise, looping both arms around Kyungsoo's waist so he doesn't just drop him back onto the floor. Kyungsoo's head lolls forward for a moment, hitting the hard slope of Baekhyun's shoulder before it tips back.  
  
Close up, Baekhyun gets a better look at Kyungsoo's face. Then the multiple needlemarks clustered along the side of Kyungsoo's neck.  
  
"Holy shit," Baekhyun says again. "What happened?"  
  
Kyungsoo's voice crackles out of his mouth. "They dosed me with something."  
  
Baekhyun gets a cold, uneasy feeling. "With what?"  
  
"How should I know, don't ask stupid questions," Kyungsoo says. He's breathing in through his nose, out through his mouth, deep and heavy. "Different shit every day. Said they wanted to find out what makes me tick."  
  
The visual makes Baekhyun's skin crawl. Baekhyun has seen his fair share of disturbing things, but not much can compete with the first time he ever got a glimpse of the constellation of scar tissue and body modifications across Kyungsoo's back. The metal topography of those cybernetic implants is visible from under Kyungsoo's prison uniform, running a path down Kyungsoo's spine. It opens up in Baekhyun the same sick anger as seeing that gang of neighborhood kids who used to torture homeless cats on the street. Always poking at the poor half-dead creatures with sticks. Holding their heads under water. Who knows if Kyungsoo'd started out like one of those strays or something entirely different. Either way he'd ended up this adult-sized dead weight in Baekhyun's arms. Advanced genetic engineering meets woodland fantasy reject. One-of-a-kind catnip for the kind of assholes who could see an extraordinary thing and want to rip it apart and look inside.  
  
Baekhyun wants to puke. Then he wants to shoot the guy responsible. He strokes down Kyungsoo's back, the only soothing gesture he can think of--  
  
\--and in response, Kyungsoo's body goes tighter than glass.  
  
Baekhyun quickly retracts his hand, misunderstanding. "Okay, no hugging. Tough it out. That's fine."  
  
"Stop talking," Kyungsoo, uh, moans?  
  
Baekhyun shifts, and suddenly feels it. "Whoa. Are you--"  
  
"It's the drug, jackass," Kyungsoo says roughly.  
  
Kyungsoo's hard. That's Kyungsoo's dick, trapped against Baekhyun's leg, not even that big but it  _feels_  big. It feels fucking gravitational.  
  
Baekhyun starts to pull away but Kyungsoo shivers like he's been left out in the cold. His hips pump forward, grinding against Baekhyun's nearest body part. Jesus. This is not how Baekhyun pictured their rescue mission going.  
  
"We need to get out of here," Baekhyun says. "Can you make it back to the ship?"  
  
Kyungsoo nods sluggishly, but even as he tries to rein himself in, his dick won't come off Baekhyun's leg. He's feverish and slow and barely standing on his own. Baekhyun has lived with Kyungsoo in the same cramped flying home-in-the-sky for months, witnessed Kyungsoo's best and worst but never this side of him. What the hell did they shoot him up with? And how long ago did they toss him in here to burn up alone?   
  
Alright, Baekhyun thinks. Byun Baekhyun, hotshot improviser. Improvise something, you shithead. They have five minutes at best before Jongdae makes it to the generator and disrupts the prison's energy shield long enough for Chanyeol to fly the Suho within range. After that, another ten minutes before the back-up systems kick in.  
  
Baekhyun can get Kyungsoo off before then, right?  
  
Carefully, he shifts his thigh higher between Kyungsoo's legs.  
  
Kyungsoo jerks back, growls. "What are you doing?"   
  
"Helping, what does it feel like?" Baekhyun shoots back. Kyungsoo's cockhead is slick through his uniform. His whole body is so intensely hot.  
  
Kyungsoo opens his mouth again, but this time all that comes out is a shallow breath. He looks pissed off, and defeated, and wild. Baekhyun keeps a solid grip around him, and presses up firmly against Kyungsoo's crotch a second time.  
  
Kyungsoo's eyelids slam shut.  
  
He pushes himself down, just to get a taste, but that taste wets something that's been planted deep inside of him and as much as Kyungsoo must hate it, the next rut of his cock is shameless and, shit, eager as hell. Baekhyun tries to give him some privacy: he looks at the wall, pets the furred nape of Kyungsoo's neck, and stands there and lets Kyungsoo use him.  
  
There's no way to be nice or polite about it and Kyungsoo doesn't even try. He holds onto the back of Baekhyun's shoulders and ruts against him like the world's ending. Like he's trying to climb closer into Baekhyun than physically possible. The heat coming off of Kyungsoo is insane. There's at least two layers of clothes between them and Baekhyun swears he can still feel every tiny jerk of Kyungsoo's dick. There's no way this feels that good--the way Kyungsoo's rubbing off on Baekhyun's leg fucking chafes--but Kyungsoo goes after that friction like the hungriest dog. Dampness smears across Baekhyun's thigh as Kyungsoo's dick grows stiffer, wetter.  
  
"That's good," Baekhyun says. Man, he just can't shut up. "Hurry up."  
  
"It's not like you're my--ideal person," Kyungsoo spits. His face is buried against Baekhyun's collarbone, and each hot puff of air makes Baekhyun's skin itch and boil.   
  
"Yeah, yeah," Baekhyun breathes, "should've sent Chanyeol instead."  
  
Kyungsoo ignores him, which Baekhyun is for once grateful for. He's not looking at Kyungsoo but he can hear him. The soft, hurt noises coming out of Kyungsoo's mouth,  _ah, ah_ , make Baekhyun's head swim.  
  
Lights flicker all the way down the corridor. That's got to be Jongdae. They're running out of time. Baekhyun pets at Kyungsoo's neck again, urging him along. He grabs a handful of Kyungsoo's damp fur and gives it a sharp tug. It's the right move: Kyungsoo chokes like he's just been punched, and fucks mindlessly against Baekhyun's thigh.  
  
"Baekhyun," he gasps.  
  
Baekhyun rocks his thigh up for Kyungsoo's benefit. "It's okay. You're okay."  
  
He doesn't know if Kyungsoo hears. Kyungsoo's moving faster, losing rhythm. Level-headed artillery geek Kyungsoo, made desperate for a good fuck, willing to roll over for scraps. Like he could come if Baekhyun so much as breathed on him.  
  
Baekhyun's heart pounds with adrenaline. His own dick twitches guilty. He wonders if Kyungsoo can sense it. If he can smell it radiating off of Baekhyun, that fresh, reluctant arousal, and it's turning Kyungsoo on even more.  
  
God this is so messed up.  
  
"C'mon," Baekhyun rasps, because when he can't think he shoots his mouth off instead. "Are you almost there? Gonna come?"  
  
"Shut up," Kyungsoo says thickly.  
  
Baekhyun finally looks at him. Kyungsoo's eyes are big and lost, shoulders hunched. With each frantic grind of his cock against Baekhyun's thigh, Baekhyun can tell it's killing him inside, but all that anger and humiliation has nowhere to go. Kyungsoo couldn't stop if he wanted to. Maybe that was possible five minutes ago but now it's like he can't live without this. He's hyper-responsive and he'll settle for anything, even if it's just Baekhyun's passive leg for him to hump like he's some kind of untrained, dirty little animal--  
  
Fuck, Baekhyun's such a fucking asshole. He can't treat Kyungsoo this way. If Kyungsoo has to come, Baekhyun can at least make it good.  
  
He nudges Kyungsoo away to make some extra room. Kyungsoo goes rigid in refusal, grabbing at Baekhyun's shirt.   
  
"Wait," Baekhyun says, frustrated, "hang on, just  _wait_."  
  
He works a hand between their bodies and cups the straining bulge of Kyungsoo's dick through his prison scrubs.  
  
Kyungsoo whimpers and thrusts into Baekhyun's hand greedily. "Yeah. Please."  
  
"No begging," Baekhyun mutters, "I got you."  
  
He doesn't know enough about Kyungsoo's physiology to have many ideas about what feels good to him. But he's got  _one_ idea, and he milks it clean, scraping his nails down the back of Kyungsoo's neck, pulling at the short ragged fur. It's an incredible, bulletproof trick. Kyungsoo squirms against him and pushes his face into Baekhyun's neck, panting. This part--it's almost hot. The way Kyungsoo's dick practically drools all over Baekhyun's hand. How his teeth scrape down Baekhyun's throat until Baekhyun has to flinch away, breathless. He squeezes harder around Kyungsoo's clothed dick and Kyungsoo spreads his knees, opens up his legs, perfectly instinctive. Baekhyun takes the hint and shoves at the waistband of Kyungsoo's loose pants. He finally gets his hand around Kyungsoo's dick, gives it a couple wet, sloppy tugs; then Kyungsoo locks up against him, bites Baekhyun's neck, and comes like someone who's never been touched before in his life. His wounded little moan drowns out the entire prison. His spunk's thicker and there's more of it than Baekhyun is accustomed to, oozing down Baekhyun's wrist, Kyungsoo's dick pulsing in Baekhyun's hand. Kyungsoo's narrow chest heaves. He hiccups into Baekhyun's shoulder, then sags violently against him. Baekhyun, dazed, repeats, "I got you," as he continues holding Kyungsoo steady.   
  
  
-  
  
  
"YOU'RE LATE," Jongdae complains from across the hangar bay, just before he roundhouse kicks some guard in the face.  
  
"I don't wanna talk about it," Baekhyun yells back. Next to him, Kyungsoo is working out his aggression by shooting a clear path through an incursion of thirty prison personnel. With a weapon in his hands, he appears to be feeling a little better.  
  
Jongdae and Chanyeol have held the Suho's airlock open for them. Chanyeol lights up when he sees Kyungsoo coming up the ramp.   
  
"I am Chanyeol," he greets, sweeping Kyungsoo cleanly off the ground.   
  
Kyungsoo grunts but otherwise just relaxes into the hug, his legs dangling a full meter in mid-air.  
  
"Thanks for waiting," Baekhyun tells Jongdae as he boards the Suho last.  
  
"What else was I gonna do," Jongdae says, covering Baekhyun's ass for him. "You guys okay?"  
  
Baekhyun shoves a hand through his hair. "I need a drink."  
  
The four of them cram inside the cockpit. Kyungsoo takes over the controls while Chanyeol hovers behind him and gives him a branchy shoulder massage. Baekhyun hovers too, chanting under his breath: "C'mon, c'mon." The hangar's going into lockdown. The Suho holds up under gunfire like a real champ but if they get trapped she's not going to last.  
  
"Just give me a goddamn second," Kyungsoo says scratchily, agitated. His hand shakes as it wraps around the throttle.   
  
They get the hell out of dodge. Kyungsoo maneuvers the Suho through the hangar bay doors just before they slam down behind them. Once they're back in the air, it's smoother sailing. The prison's external security is pretty much crap (because who'd want to break into a prison?), and though the Suho has taken damage to one of her engines, it's survivable. They gain enough distance to get a good view of the entire asteroid, gray and jagged, filling the cockpit window. Kyungsoo slumps back in the pilot seat.  
  
Chanyeol breaks the relieved tension, rumbling down into Kyungsoo's ear, "I am Chanyeol."  
  
Kyungsoo glances up fondly. "No shit."  
  
"I didn't catch that one," Jongdae says.  
  
"He said this place really sucks," Kyungsoo says.  
  
The energy shield is programmed to stay down for another sixty seconds. Baekhyun doesn't know how to go about saying,  _Sorry about what they did to you,_  so instead he asks, "Do you wanna blow it up?"  
  
Kyungsoo bares his sharp little teeth.  
  
They leave Basement 6 Penitentiary cratered, burning and gutted. The asteroid trails smoke through black space like a distress fire, dead in the water. Kyungsoo's aim is immaculate as always. "It's good to have you back," Jongdae laughs.  
  
  
-  
  
  
Post-Credits Scene:  
  
Baekhyun stumbles upon Kyungsoo later in the cargo hold, sitting on one of the empty crates and cleaning his guns. Someone has updated the [34] DAYS WITHOUT CHANYEOL DYING sign to read [35].   
  
"Go to bed, dude," Baekhyun says.  
  
Kyungsoo shakes his head, so the only choice Baekhyun has now is to take a seat on a neighboring crate and keep him company. The Suho occasionally creaks and whirs beneath them, alive. It's a good night for flying. They've set coordinates for a nearby repair station, and the trajectory from here to there is nice and effortless.   
  
"Thanks for today," Kyungsoo finally says.  
  
"No problem," Baekhyun says, too quickly. "Friend in need."  
  
"Not for  _that_ ," Kyungsoo makes a repulsed face, though it's halfhearted. "Thanks for bailing me out."  
  
Baekhyun scratches the back of his neck, a little bashful. "Yeah, sure. You'd do the same if it was me."  
  
Kyungsoo gives him a careful look, then turns back to his dismantled gun parts.   
  
"What?" Baekhyun asks.  
  
Kyungsoo shrugs. "Nothing."  
  
Baekhyun won't push it. Still, he leans closer. "Don't tell me you've fallen in love with me or something."  
  
Kyungsoo reaches a hand out casually and shoves Baekhyun so hard he almost topples to the floor. Well, that feels more normal.  
  
"I mean, no judgment," Baekhyun adds, rubbing his shoulder. "It happens a lot. I'm used to it."  
  
Kyungsoo gets this grudging expression on his face like he actually thinks Baekhyun's pretty funny. Satisfied, Baekhyun lies back on his crate and peers up through the observation window, at the stars speeding alongside the ship. What a shitty fucking day. Exhaustion poisons Baekhyun down to his bones. Being back onboard this floating heap of seven year old garbage has never felt more rewarding.  
  
He glances back over at Kyungsoo. Nevermind, he's going to push it. "Hey."  
  
Kyungsoo says, "Yeah?" disinterestedly.   
  
"Whatever happened to you before, however many ways you got fucked over in the past, you have people to bail you out now," Baekhyun says. "Like at least three different people. You know that, right? You belong somewhere now."  
  
"Wow," Kyungsoo says. "Are you sure you're not the one who's in love with me?"  
  
Baekhyun huffs a laugh. They don't really talk after that, sitting together semi-comfortably in the cargo hold as the time passes. He's almost dozed off by the time Kyungsoo eventually responds, in a way that's meant to go unheard, "You belong somewhere too."


End file.
